Home Appliances Coordination Scheme for Energy Management (HACS4EM) using Wireless Sensor Networks in Smart Grids

In this paper, a home energy management (HEM) scheme based on appliances coordination has been proposed for future smart grids. This scheme is based on communication among home appliances, a central energy management unit (EMU), smart meter and the storage unit inside home. A wireless sensor home area network (WSHAN) using ZigBee protocol is employed for relaying messages among different entities involved in our proposed HEM scheme. The performance of WSHAN is analyzed with respect to different networking properties. HEM implementation will lead to socially and economically beneficial environment by addressing the consumers' and utilities concerns. Increased savings, better peak load management and reduction in peak to average ratio are some of the benefits achieved by proposed scheme. Appropriate use of HEMs in a system integrated with distributed resources along with appliances co-ordination and dynamic pricing scheme provides the optimized solutions for energy management issues in smart grids as confirmed by simulation results. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.