Microcontroller Based Load Prioritization Technique in Residential Sector

Abstract

With the continuous increase in load demand, it will be problematic at generation side to keep on varying the power supply to match the pace of increasing customer’s demand. Hence, it causes large power cuts and power shortages in residential areas. As a solution of above problem, we have proposed the automation based load prioritization technique in the residential sector. For the above study, we have classified the loads into two categories as Flexible and non-Flexible loads. Flexible loads are one which can be treated as lowest priority loads and its operating time can be shifted easily to reduce the energy consumption. Whereas, Non-flexible loads are one which can be treated as highest priority loads and they are not shifted from their scheduled time. As a result, this approach shifts the load according to user’s priority index to manage the consumption effectively. Study has been demonstrated with the use of ATmega 2560 microcontroller powered by relay circuitry. This proposed automation technique will reduce the man work by automatically shedding of load based on priority mechanism.