Smart Home Renewable Energy Management System

One of the major attribute of the smart grid is to integrate renewable and storage energy resources at the consumption premises. This paper presents the design, implementation and testing of an embedded system that integrates solar and storage energy resources to a smart home. The proposed system provides and manages a smart home energy requirement by installing renewable energy; and scheduling and arranging the power flow during peak and off-peak period. In addition to that, a two-ways communication protocol is developed to enable the home owner and the utility provider to better optimize the energy flow and the consumption efficiency. A prototype for the proposed system was designed, implemented and tested using a controlled load bank to simulate a scaled random real house consumption behavior. Three different scenarios were tested and the results and findings are reported. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC).