An Online Home Energy Management System using Q-Learning and Deep Q-Learning

Abstract

The users of home energy management systems schedule their real-time energy consumption thanks to advancements in communication technology and smart metering infrastructures. In this paper, a data-driven strategy is proposed, which is an Online Home Energy Management System (ON-HEM) that uses reinforcement learning algorithms (Q-Learning and Deep Q-Learning) to control the optimal energy consumption of a smart home system. The proposed system comprises power resources (grid, photovoltaic), communication networks, and appliances with their agents classified into four groups: deferrable, non-deferrable, power level controllable, and electric vehicle. The system reduces electricity costs and high peak demands while considering the cost of user dissatisfaction with real-life data. Simulations are performed on the proposed ON-HEM considering different pricing approaches (Real Time Pricing and Time of Use Pricing) with Q-Learning and Deep Q-Learning (DQL) algorithms using PyCharm Professional Edition software. The findings demonstrate both the superiority of DQL over Q-Learning and the efficiency of the proposed ON-HEM in decreasing high peak demand, electricity costs, and customer dissatisfaction costs. The efficiency and dependability of the proposed system were verified by utilizing simulation-based findings with real-life data using IBM SPSS Statistics software.