A Smart Energy system: Distributed resource management, control and optimization

Abstract

This paper presents a novel concept of distributed energy resource and consumption management, which proposes to design a networked and embedded platform for realizing a dynamic energy mix and optimizing the energy consumption dynamically. Based on heterogeneous wireless sensor networks and a local Web of Things platform, the environmental parameters and energy data can be acquired and processed in a distributed manner in real time. In order to improve understanding on how different environmental factors and user behaviors influence the end use of energy, we propose a User Profiling module to investigate the characterization of user's goals and behaviors in terms of energy consumption. Besides the wireless sensor networks, the User Profiling module acquires data also from a questionnaire which mainly concerns four categories, i.e. characteristics of the residents, electrical appliances, attitudes towards energy and building structural information. Furthermore, based on the real-time information from the sensor network platform and the user profiling module, an embedded Resource and Consumption Controller will then adapt automatically for instance the regulation processes of energy consumption in a household locally for the users, so that the costs of all energy resources will not exceed the predetermined budget and be regulated in a user-preferred way.