Smart Home and Building Energy Management Systems

Abstract

Smart home and building energy management (H/BEM) systems are one of the most critical elements to support data exchange between an energy management unit and smart devices, such as smart plugs, smart meters, smart appliances, and electric vehicles in a premises area network. An H/BEM energy management unit is typically embedded with intelligent algorithms to allow energy savings, reduce peak demand consumption, increase energy efficiency, and facilitate demand response applications. The objective of this chapter is to present a typical architecture of a smart H/BEM system, its communication network requirements, communication technologies, and protocols applicable to smart home and building applications, as well as energy savings/peak demand management algorithms. Demand response implementation studies are demonstrated using a smart home located at Yildiz Technical University. Widely used wired and wireless communication technologies for H/BEM systems discussed in this chapter are (wired) Ethernet, power line communication, ITU-T G.hn, and HomePNA, as well as (wireless) Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Z-Wave, 6LoWPAN, and EnOcean. This chapter also discusses widely used standards and protocols for home/building area networks, such as BACnet, SEP 2.0, LonWorks, KNX, X10, DALI, and U-SNAP.