Hardware Home Energy Management System for

Monitoring the Quality of Energy Service at Small

Consumers
Ciprian Ionut PAUNESCU, Tudor ZABAVA, Lucian TOMA, Constantin BULAC, Mircea EREMIA
Department of Electrical Power Systems
University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest
Bucharest, Romania
Email: ciprian@nssweb.ro
Abstract This paper presents a laboratory hardware system,
developed in the Department of Electrical Power Systems of
University Politehnica of Bucharest, that simulate an energy
management system to be applied in a smart home. The core of
the system is a controller that is capable of switching on/off
various domestic appliances as a response to price signals. The
system may be capable of communicating with all loads and with
the main meter, and may provide information about the power
quality. Also, the system may be capable of responding to
suppliers signals in order to provide a demand response service.
Index Terms-- home energy management system (HEM), smart
home, smart grids

I.

INTRODUCTION

According to Siemens [1], the buildings are responsible

for 40% of the world energy consumption and for 21% of the
total greenhouse emissions. For these reasons, buildings are
key elements in the targets to reduce the energy consumption
and to implement sustainable development programs.
Implementation of advanced technologies and transforming
the buildings into manageable entities may help reducing the
greenhouse emissions by up to 40%.
The smart home concept, together with the energy
management systems for small applications, are normal
evolutions in the implementation process of the smart grids
concept towards transforming the traditional consumers in
more active ones, becoming in some cases prosumers. Various
solutions have been proposed in the literature, and innovative
projects have been implemented in pilot projects, many of
them focusing on metering and data management.

compatibility between equipments. The Zigbee technology for

application in the smart home is presented in [4], where a new
routing protocol DMPR (Disjoint Multi Path based Routing)
to improve the performance of the ZigBee sensor networks is
proposed. The interaction between the user and the home
energy management system is decisive in helping the
customer to easily adopt the new technology. A user
interaction interface for energy management in smart homes is
proposed in [5].
Various control and optimization algorithms have been
proposed. An optimal and automatic residential energy
consumption scheduling framework which attempts to achieve
a desired trade-off between minimizing the electricity
payment and minimizing the waiting time for the operation of
each appliance in household in the presence of a real-time
pricing tariff combined with inclining block rates is proposed
in [6]. Authors of [7] and [8] propose optimization algorithms
to be implemented in the home energy management systems
to determine the optimal operation of residential appliances
within 5-minute time slots while considering uncertainties in
real-time electricity prices.
II.

THE CONCEPT OF HOME ENERGY MANAGEMENT

SYSTEM

A home energy management (HEM) system includes any

hardware and software elements by means of which various
energy management objectives can be achieved. HEM
includes metering systems, sensors and communication
infrastructure and thus it can be easily identified by a smart
metering system. A HEM is customized in terms of
customers needs and the type of energy services provided by
A connected home platform and development framework the suppliers.
for design, development and deployment of smart home
A home energy management may be configured mainly
services is presented in [2], whereas a lightweight key into three areas (Fig. 1): the main metering area, the home
establishment protocol for smart home energy management appliances area and the external communication area. The
systems and the implementation details of the protocol are home controller is the brain which hosts the applications for
proposed in [3]. One challenging technical issues is the
978-1-4673-6487-4/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE

control and optimization. The communication with the home

appliances is performed via sensors.
The software implemented in the HEM system, through
the home controller, allows the customer to get informed
about a large range of economical and technical
characteristics, among which:

Power/energy quality supplied from the public

distribution grid; the most important parameters are
the voltage level, voltage dips, overvoltages, flicker
and harmonics;

Energy cost, for both the already consumed energy

and for the next period consumption based on
forecasts; furthermore the energy price for the next
hours may also be provided; it is expected that hourly
or 15 minutes tariffs will be regular at small
consumers in the near future;

Operation scheduling and energy consumption may

be performed in terms of energy price and availability
of local generation;

controllable loads, which may be optimally scheduled

for operation or can be switched on/off at any time,
e.g. heating system, iron, air conditioner, washing
machine, electric vehicle, etc.

The home controller can get information from each load

appliance regarding the on/off state and the instantaneous
consumption. On the other hand, the home controller can
receive information from the generation units regarding
instantaneous generation, state of charge, atmospheric
conditions, etc. and may schedule charging/discharging of the
battery (or the electric vehicle), operation of controllable loads
(e.g. washing machine).
Based on the information about the load appliances and the
local generation, the home controller may forecast the load for
the next hours, may calculate the amount of power available
for disconnection if required by the energy supplier.
B. The Metering Area
It consists of all meters authorized by the service supplier
and the distribution company (for electricity, water and natural
gas) and the communication infrastructure with the home
controller.
Until now, no clear general characteristics of the meters
have been defined in no country. The European Commission
has issued a directive by which the EU member states, if
feasible [10], are required to implement the smart metering for
electrical energy at all levels, while at least 80% of the meters
to comply with the smart metering requirements until year
2020.

Figure 1. HEM Architecture [9].

A display may be used as the interface between the owner

and the HEM system. The owner may set the operation
schedule, may start up or shut down load appliances, or may
change the status of various load appliances for volunteer
disconnection when requested by the energy supplier.

Since these meters are the only equipments authorized as

judicial interface between the customer and the service
supplier and the distribution company, besides the energy
quantity, they should be designed so that to provide at least
energy quality parameters and compatible communication
protocol. Other functions (e.g. operation scheduling) are more
appropriate to be implemented in the home controller as they
may be customized according to the customers needs.
Examples of meters, for electrical energy, water and natural
gas are shown in Figure 2.

A HEM may be designed so that to manage not only

information about electrical energy but also information about
other services, including water, natural gas, heating, etc.
The three zones of the HEM system are presented as
follows.
A. The Home Appliances area
This area consists of all load appliances, generation units
(wind turbine, PV panel, diesel genset, battery, etc.), sensors,
switches, and communication infrastructure with the home
controller.
In order to apply some control functions, the load
appliances may be divided into two categories:

vital loads, which cannot be controlled, e.g. life

systems, refrigerator, desktop computer, etc.

a.

b.

c.

Figure 2. Meters: a) electrical energy; b) water; c) natural gas.

New administrative service can be provided after smart

metering implementation. The electrical energy supplier may
become a service provider and may include in its services
contract other services like water and natural gas,
representing, from judicial point of view, the customer in
relation with the distribution companies.

C. The External Communication Area

It represents communication infrastructure and protocol
between the smart home and the supplier, via the home
controller, although the supplier may get information about
the customer load directly from the authorized meter.
Information from a certain number of meters are gathered into
a data concentrator then sent to the central system of the
supplier. The most efficient communication is by Ethernet
type infrastructure, although radio communication is more
secure.

MySQL

INFORMATION EXCHANGED BETWEEN THE SMART HOME

Interface with
the database

Interface with the

command module
Decision
module
Interface to the
intelligent meter

Web interface

AND THE ENERGY SUPPLIER

from smart home to energy

supplier
instantaneous load
load forecast
availability to disconnect loads

III.

from energy supplier to smart

home
energy price
monthly invoice
scheduled service interruptions
daily information in the energy
field

USB

PHP

Example of information exchanged between the customer

and the energy supplier is shown in Table I.
TABLE I.

Command
module

Database

HTTP

TCP/IP
Meter
(simulated)

Browser
(client)

Figure 3. HEM Arhitecture.

THE SMART HOME ENERGY MANAGEMENT SIMULATOR

A. HEM architecture
The HEM system was designed so that to fulfill the
requirements for home-comfort of a smart home, which means
that a friendly interface should be attached for remote control,
by smart phone, pad, computer, etc. The GUI software was
implemented under PHP, thereby facilitating communication
with the database, sensors, smart meter, as well as with the
user terminals using a single platform. The GUI can be
accessed from any terminal that incorporates a web browser,
and thus installing a software on all user devices is not
necessary. Another advantage of the web platform is that, with
the internet router installed, it can be accessed from any corner
of the world.

a)

Figure 3 shows the main HEM architecture.

The decision module is a Raspberry PI simulator, which is
a programmable board that hosts the simulation and control
software under the Linux platform. This type of device is the
best choice considering the performance/price ratio, and its
price is about $35 only.
The command module is a programmable logic controller
(PLC), called MicroDev D4-USB, which is a device that
communicates with the decision module (home controller) via
an USB 2.0 protocol. Its role is to implement the decisions
taken by the control software. This PLC has been designed in
the Department of Electrical Power Systems of University
Politehnica of Bucharest, and its front and back views are
shown in Figure 4.
The MicroDev PLC device was manufactured for the
purpose of performing simulations in a student laboratory and
not for commercial purposes, thereby its architecture allows
easy configuration and implementation of various functions so
that the home area management concept is much easy to teach.

b)
Figure 4. Front (a) and back (b) views of the MicroDev D4-USB device:
1 microcontroller; 2 - USB port; 3 digital inputs; 4 relays; 5 - relays
exists; 6 - LCD port; 7 LCD; 8 - RF module; 9 - RF module antenna.

The PLC unit have one LCD with 4 lines and 40 characters
per line, which displays information from the home controller
via USB, such as energy price or real power consumptions, 7
relay outputs for auxiliary circuits and SSR control for high
power consumption, digital and analog inputs for sensors and
other data acquisition. It consists also of an 433MHz radio
frequency (RF) module for wireless communication with the
RF controlled plugs.

MicroDev can be used as a meter as it is capable of

metering electrical parameters, and thus for this stage no other
meter was used. However, in terms of future developments of
the installation, a smart meter will be installed mainly to test
characteristics and functionality of the future metering
equipment.
MicroDev receives decisional signal from the Raspberry
PI simulator and commands switching on/off of the electrical
appliances via solid state relays.
The Pinguino IDE (Integrated Development Environment)
was used to program the MicroDev device thanks to its
important advantages: it is open source and open hardware
and there are open source compilers available for all platforms
(Windows, GNU/Linux and Mac OS X)
The database was created under MySQL because it can
run on a large number of software platforms. Furthermore it is
easy to use also due to the free application phpMyAdmin
written under PHP.

8-10. Controllable plugs, connected to fuses S4, with

control on the addresses 11111A, 11111B, and
11111C;
11.
Load, 100W, connected to plug 6;
12-14. Loads, 60W, connected to plugs 7, 9 and 10;
15.
Plug to supply the router and the microcontroller to
fuse S1;
16.
Home controller - Raspberry PI simulator;
17.
Wireless router TP-LINK - TL-WR740N.
The loads are simulated through electric lamps. The loads
are supplied either through controlled or uncontrolled plugs.
Loads 11 and 12 are controlled via SSP, whereas loads 13 and
14 are controlled via controlled plugs. A large number of
loads can be also simulated.
A controllable plug is shown in Figure 6.

The database stores various types of information, from

admin information to energy information. The information
stored in the database is accessed and processed by the
decision module.
B. The hardware simulator
A laboratory hardware smart home simulator (Fig. 5) was
developed within the Laboratory of Smart Grids from the
Department of Electrical Power System, University
Politehnica of Bucharest, according to the home energy
management system concept presented above. It is an open
system and it can be easily used for teaching.

Figure 5. Laboratory hardware smart home simulator.

The components of the HEM laboratory platform are:

1.
2.
3.
4-5.
6-7.

Smart meter;
Bipolar fuses, from left to right: S1, S2, S3 and S4;
MicroDev command module;
Solid State Relays (SSR) 40 A;
Regular plugs, connected to S2 and S3 through
SSR1 and SSR2;

Figure 6. Controllable plug.

An ID is associated to each plug. The user may choose

from what plug to supply a certain load. The plugs
communicate on the 433 MHz frequency and they
continuously analyze any signal to check if the controlled ID
signal match with their ID. This type of plugs allows remote
control of the loads from the used terminal. All other loads,
controlled via SSRs are controlled by the home controlled
only based on a predefined algorithm.
C. Functions of the simulation and control software
The algorithm implemented in the home controller aims
mainly to minimize the total energy costs by optimally
switching on/off controllable loads in terms of energy price.
The energy price is assumed to vary at predefined time
intervals. The interval length was set to one hour. It is
assumed that the energy price for all interval of the next day is
known in advance, thus allowing the software to perform
minimization of the total cost. The software may also generate
random price profile within a minimum and a maximum limit
so that the price may be known in advance also in a predefined
time.
The user interface with the HEM system is done via a
dedicated software developed under Android OS. The user can
have access to the loads characteristics and also can remotely
switch on/off a load appliance.
Figures 7 and 8 show print screens of a few pages as seen
from a smart phone. The GUI is similar for a pad or a PC.
Using the WiFi user terminal, loads can be added or deleted
from the list, loads can be remotely switched on/off according
to the customer decision, loads can be edited and so on.

E. Future developments
This technology and architecture for the home energy
management concept will be implemented in a laboratory
passive house built in the yard of University Politehnica of
Bucharest. The house is provided with advanced construction
technology and heating/cooling technology. Real electrical
appliances will be added to the house and then additional
functions will be added to the already tested HEM system.
IV.

Figure 7. HEM GUI.

CONCLUSIONS

The laboratory home energy management simulator

developed in UPB follows the actual trends of the smart grid
concept. The architecture and the algorithms implemented are
based on authors experience and not on existing legislation
since no regulation is in force regarding smart metering. The
controller is flexible for implementation of various functions
and algorithms. It is expected that smart metering to small
consumers will be available for the market in the near future.
The HEMS system may be able to record currents,
voltages, power, but also can communicate with a certified
electrical meter to record and process information related to
the power quality, including voltage dips, flicker, harmonics,
etc. All the information can be shown to the user through a
friendly interface via a smart phone of tablet.
REFERENCES
[1].

Figure 8. HEM GUI.

D. Simulations
Figure 9 shows the load response to energy price for a
boiler and an air conditioner. The loads are switched on when
the price is low, while during high price periods the loads are
switched off.

a.

b.
Figure 9. Load response in terms of energy price: a) boiler; b) air
conditioner.

The simulations were performed using some hypothetic

energy consumptions or price profile.

***, Siemens The company: Infrastructure & Cities Sector Online:

http://www.siemens.com/about/pool/business/infrastructure_cities/ic_
2013_q1_update_en.pdf
[2]. N. Papadopoulos, A. Meliones, D. Economou, I. Karras, I. Liverezas,
A Connected Home Platform and Development Framework for Smart
Home Control Applications, Proceedings of 7th IEEE International
Conference on Industrial Informatics, INDIN 2009, Cardiff, Wales,
UK, 23-26 June 2009.
[3]. Y. Li, Design of A Key Establishment Protocol for Smart Home
Energy Management System, Proceedings of 2013 5th International
Conference on Computational Intelligence, Communication Systems
and Networks (CICSyN), Madrid, Spain, 5-7 June 2013.
[4]. D.-M. Han and J.-H. Lim, Design and Implementation of Smart
Home Energy Management Systems based on ZigBee, IEEE Trans.
Consumer Electronics, vol. 56, issue 3, pp. 1417-1425, August 2010.
[5]. B. Becker, A. Kellerer, H. Schmeck, User Interaction Interface for
Energy Management in Smart Homes, Proceedings of 2012 IEEE
PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT), Washington DC, 1620 January 2012.
[6]. A.-H. Mohsenian-Rad, A. Leon-Garcia, Optimal Residential Load
Control With Price Prediction in Real-Time Electricity Pricing
Environments, IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 1, no. 2, September
2010.
[7]. Z. Chen, L. Wu, Y. Fu, Real-Time Price-Based Demand Response
Management for Residential Appliances via Stochastic Optimization
and Robust Optimization, IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 3, no. 4,
December 2012.
[8]. Z. Chen, and L. Wu, Residential Appliance DR Energy Management
With Electric Privacy Protection by Online Stochastic Optimization,
IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, in press.
[9]. M. Eremia, L. Toma, Towards the intelligent cities of the future
Smart cities (in Romanian), The 7th edition of International
Conference on the Academic Days of the Academy of Technical
Sciences of Romania, Bucharest, Romania, Agir Publisher, ISSN
2066-6585, 11-12 October 2012.
[10]. ***, Intelligent metering in Romania (in Romanian), study prepared
by A.T. Kearney, Romanian National Energy Regulatory Authority, 3
September 2012.