Intelligent Energy Information Service Based on a Multi-Home Environment

Abstract

As concerns about climate change increase, various efforts have focused on the reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG). The efficient management of energy consumption is widely studied as a possible method of reducing GHG, and some products that aid in this effort are already available in the market. However, present systems have limitations in providing information because available data are confined. These systems are designed for use in single homes, which make available data limited. To overcome this limitation, this paper introduces an intelligent energy management system based on a multi-home environment. Unlike ordinary smart home technologies available in the market, the proposed system shares energy consumption data with its neighbors to generate enhanced information on energy saving. With intelligent services delivering the enhanced information, users can understand their energy consumption behavior and identify problems on energy usage. The developed energy management system in this work gives users motivation to save energy and insight into achieving energy saving, which will help in establishing an efficient society. To achieve a-multi home environment, the client–server system architecture is implemented, and the communication module for building a network is developed. The data structure for sharing data on energy consumption is defined. The implemented services provided by the developed system for energy saving are as follows: energy consumption monitoring, remote control functionality of home appliances, and intelligent services, including statistics and energy consumption comparison with neighbors.