Interaction Research on the Smart Power Consumption

doi:10.4236/epe.2013.54B158

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Energy and Power Engineering, 2013, 5, 824-827

doi:10.4236/epe.2013.54B158 Published Online July 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/epe)

Interaction Research on the Smart Power Consumption

Suxiang Zhang1, Jianming Liu1, Suxian Zhang2, Jinping Cao1

1State Grid Information & Telecommunication Co., Ltd. Beijing

2Department of foreign language of Hebei university, Baoding, China

Email: [email protected]

Received March, 2013

ABSTRACT

Due to the rapid growth of the air condition ing load of the residents had bigger impact on power grid safety and power

smooth operation, in order to improve energy conservation and reduce emissions of the residents, many countries had

studied the home energy management system (HEMS) in the world. In this paper, based on the summary of the work of

other countries, the HEMS research and practice situation of China were discussed, combined with the national devel-

opment and reform commission (NDRC) project, the power consumption visualization empirical research had been car-

ried on in different cities in 2012, the interaction results show that the load can be reduced by an average of 6.67%,

which proved that the electricity interactive was very interesting for long-term strategy of energy conservation and

emissions reduction.

Keywords: HEMS; Smart Power Consumption; Load Regulation and Control; Power Consumption Visualization

1. Introduction

A smart grid is an electrical grid that uses information

and communications technology to gather and act on

information, such as information about the behaviors of

suppliers and consumers, in an automated fashion to im-

prove the efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustain-

ability of the production and distribution of electricity [1].

The smart grid also allows for systematic communication

between suppliers and consumers, and permits both to be

more flexible and sophisticated in their operational

strategies. The overall effect is a signal that awards en-

ergy efficiency and energy consumption that is sensitive

to the time-varying limitations of the supply.

In recent years, with the rapid development of econ-

omy and the improvement of people’s living standard,

power tense situation had been more and more obvious,

Load management [2] is very essential to the operation of

power companies, which can enhance the energy-eff-

icient and reliable operation of power system, and we

need to build the flexible and intelligent energy systems,

that are able to meet the goals set for reducing CO2

emissions as well as to ensure security of supply in the

future.

In this paper, we paid some attentions for home energy

management systems (HEMS) in the smart grid, the con-

tents of this paper are as following: section 2 introduced

some practices in other countries; based on the modern

communication and information processing, China HEMS

was proposed and discussed in section 3; in section 4, we

introduce some achievements in our HEMS work; finally

is conclusions.

2. Related Works in Other Countries

Controlling electricity consumption is one of the key

features within future smart community. HEMS have

played a role this by controlling Home appliances through

Home Appliance control interface. Many countries in the

world have studied HEMS as following:

In South Korean [3], the increasing demand of elec-

tricity along with increased efficiency requirement cre-

ates new opportunities for the development of demand

side management programs. However, due to the low

residential electricity costs, consumers lack the under-

standing of the smart grid, reluctant to buy smart grid

related equipment and products, making the smart grid

market it are difficult to generate revenues. South Korea's

knowledge econo my ministry had decided to invest 2547

billion won from 2009 to 2012 in developing smart grid

commercial technology, the sensors were installed in

power stations, transmission equipment and electrical

appliances product, which was known as “green electric-

ity IT” project.

In Canada [4], HEMS are integral to the aspects of

Smart Grid that are on the customer side of the electricity

meter and will provide the means for customers to exert

control over and maximize the efficiency of energy use

within their homes. Ontario Power Company had de-

ployed smart meters over 80 distribution companies;

S. X. ZHANG ET AL. 825

smart meter installation number has reached 4.6 million.

Ontario Power Company had cooperation with Trilliant,

Elster, Sensus, SilverSpring and Tantalus company, who

had deployed five different types AMI respectively,

which can make HEMS market application to became

reality, to help residents are more "smart" electricity.

In USA [5] the Green Button initiative is an indus-

try-led effort that responds to a White House call-to-ac-

tion to provide utility customers with easy and secure

access to their energy usage information in a consumer-

friendly and computer-friendly format. Customers are

able to securely download their own detailed energy us-

age with a simple click of a literal “Green Button” on

electric utilities’ websites. With their own data in hand,

consumers can take advantage of a growing array of on-

line services to help them manage energy use and save

on their bills.

In Japan [6] The Ministry of Economy, Trade and In-

dustry (METI) has decided to recommend Echonet-Lite

as the standard interface for connecting electric appli-

ances and electronic equipment in the home to a HEMS.

METI had defined the HEMS protocols and commands

for connection with appliances equipped with the Echo-

net-Lite interface, so that home electric appliances with

the Echonet-Lite interface can be commercialized in time

to contribute to power saving. With in creasing awareness

of environmental issues and concerns over the supply of

electricity in Japan since the Great East Japan Earth-

quake, energy saving measures for the home is becoming

a pressing need. In response to that need, Panasonic has

developed the Smart Home Energy Management System

(SMARTHEMS) to help create, store, use and manage

energy efficiently. Data concerning electricity, gas and

water consumption is measured in real time, and users

can for example monitor the current charging status of

storage batteries and solar power generation systems and

see the CO2 balance for the entire home, giving an in-

sight into energy usage and ways of further saving en-

ergy in the home [7].

3. Interaction Research in China

3.1. Definition of the HEMS

In China [8], the Smart grid is the highly integrated by

the modern technology and the strong network, which

can maximize accept clean energy, achieve a low carbon

green life, and improv e the stability of the power grid, so

it is the new modern grid. In the power consumption link,

in this paper, we only had studied on HEMS, firstly, we

will give the definition of the HEMS: the network inter-

action and instant connection can be realized between

users and family electrical equipments, and between us-

ers and power grid companies through a series of equip-

ment with the following functions: energy consumption

acquisition, equipment control, interaction with users,

and interaction with the grid, and realize the management

of home energy consumption to help the user saving en-

ergy.

The HEMS system has played an important role to

achieve the family energy efficiency management, which

had decided the interactive manner, communication

technology and procedure between the users and the

power grid, and between intelligent h ome appliances and

the power grid.

HEMS were installed in the residents home as shown

in Figure 1, the electricity information using wirelessly

(433 MHZ) way were sent to the HEMS Intelligent ga-

teway by using of the smart sockets, which included

washing machine, refrigerator, air conditioner and other

high-power power consumption equipment, so we com-

pleted the data collection tasks. Users can interact through

HEMS terminals (using WiFi way) to see their electricity

data; Moreover, the real-time power consumption infor-

mation were remotely transmitted to the master station

through HEMS intelligent gate and optical fibe r compos-

ite low voltage cables (OPLC), when people want to know

his power consumption information, they can brows ter-

minal; at the same time, other service can be proposed by

other companies using our HEMS system, such as seeing

hd movie, order foods, telemedicine and so on. Moreover,

clean energy can be used in family, transmission and

distribution infrastructure will be better able to handle

possible bidirectional energy flows, allowing for distrib-

uted generation such as from photovoltaic panels on

building roofs.

3.2. Key Products

To realize the HEMS, the key equipments were re-

searched such as air-conditioning, air-conditioning fan,

these equipments need information interaction with user,

for example, the user can know the power consumption

of the air-conditioning and load period, but now, lack of

Figure 1. HEMS family architecture.

S. X. ZHANG ET AL.

826

the functions in China, the Media manufacture etc. had

produced some intelligent home appliance, but the price

is very expensive. What can we do more? According to

HEMS system application requirements, the HEMS ter-

minal, smart socket, intelligent gateway and other hard-

ware products had been researched. HEMS terminal(as

shown in Figure 2) can be used to monitor and manage

the family electrical equipment, which can collect and

analyze for the electric power quality and power con-

sumption information, to guide the users for the reason-

able power consumption, to adjust grid load shift, and

realize the smart power consumption between the power

grid and users. The intelligent gateway (as shown in

Figure 3) is the family control hub, mainly to achieve the

information collection and forwarding, such as security

alarm, home appliances, electric data and all kinds of

control information. It is interacted with the HEMS ter-

minal and other products through the network. Smart

socket (as shown in Figure 4) can acquire the real-time

electric power data, and remotely control on-off state by

using the equipment (HEMS terminal or computer) and

can remotely monitor appliances work state to help user

reasonable electric consumption. Some energy man-

agement software had also been developed as shown in

Figure 5.

Figure 2. HEMS terminal.

Figure 3. HEMS intelligent gateway.

Figure 4. Smart socket.

Figure 5. Home energy efficiency management assistant.

Figure 6. Communication architecture of HEMS.

In Figure 6, we show that the communication archi-

tecture of HEMS, In the HEMS, many communication

technologies had been used. In the family LAN, such as

Wi-Fi, Zigbee, RF433, power line broadband or power

line narrowband and so on. The information comes from

home distributed power and the smart meter will be inte-

grated in the local access network, here, optical commu-

nication and the power line broadband can be used.

Through the distribution area, here, using of the optical

fiber communication. The final information can be re-

motely transferred to the master station.

3.3. Communication Architecture of HEMS

To reduce demand during the high cost peak usage peri-

ods, communications and metering technologies inform

smart devices in the home when energy demand is high

and track how much electricity is used and when it is

used. It also gives utility companies the ability to reduce

consumption by communicating to devices directly in

order to prevent system overloads.

In the HEMS, many communication technologies had

been used. In the family LAN, such as Wi-Fi, Zigbee,

RF433, power line broadband or power line narrowband

and so on. The information comes from home distributed

power and the smart meter will be integrated in the local

S. X. ZHANG ET AL.

827

access network, here, optical communication and the

power line broadband can be used. Through the distribu-

tion area, here, using of the optical fiber communication.

The final information can be remotely transferred to the

master station.

4. Further Work

In July 2011, the national development and reform com-

mission suggests because the air conditioning load of the

residents and business users rapid crease, cause to the

great influence of the power grid security and stable op-

eration, how to control the air condition ing load power is

the research content of the power demand side manage-

ment. To research this, in 2012, we had chosen the four

cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanchang and Yinchuan and

recruited some volunteers. In these cities, smart commu-

nities had been built and many people had installed

HEMS in their home, we carried on the empirical re-

search for power consumption visualization to achieve

the influence of power consumption visualization on the

user behavior and the electric power load; when the

power load is peak, the company will send a message to

these volunteers, the volunteers would like to close the

air conditioning and other high power appliances in time,

our experiment time is in 2012.6-2012.9, the Load reduction

results were shown in Table 1(not include Nanchang).

From the different cities, we knew that the load reduc-

tion rate had been realized with the different levels, which

showed the power consumption visualization could en-

hance the user saving energy sense, and further reduce

the difference between peak and valley and Smooth load

curve.

Table 1. Empirical research results.

City Data term Kw

The Maximum load 37.46

The minimum load 4.83

The difference b etween Peak and valley 32.63

Beijing

Load reduction rate 6.82%

The Maximum load 44.9

The minimum load 5.49

The difference b etween Peak and valley 39.41

Shanghai

Load reduction rate 8.77%

The Maximum load 25.7

The minimum load 1.64

The difference b etween Peak and valley 24.06

Yinchuan

Load reduction rate 4.43%

5. Conclusions

The interaction on the smart power consumption can be

researched; we gave the definition of home energy man-

agement system in this paper, discussed its related

HEMS system structure and communication technology,

and elaborated the practice and further work in the field

of HEMS. Through an empirical study for power con-

sumption visualization in the different cities, experiment

showed that interaction could reduce electricity load dif-

ference between peak and valley, and smooth the load

curve. Along with further construction and promotion of

the smart grid, the energy consciousness of the user can

be improved, and the slogan “in telligent po wer consump-

tion, better life” will be became the main goal of the life.

6. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National High-tech R&D

Program of China (863 Program) (No. 2011AA05A116),

National major projects of science and technology: Col-

laborative network control platform and the key tech-

nology of ubiquitous networks under multi-terminal

(2011ZX03005-004-01); the National Basic Research

Program of China (973 Program): Basic theor y and prac-

tice research of Internet of Things (2011CB302900).

The work was also supported by science and technol-

ogy project of State Grid Corporation (Smart power

consumption empirical study)

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