In-house monitoring and control network for the smart grid of the future

Abstract

Electricity consumption in the household has been steadily increasing during the last decades, becoming a major problem for utilities, customers, and the environment. Smart metering systems are not enough to reduce such consumption. The electric grid of the future - the Smart Grid - will need to go beyond the house meters, up to the individual appliances, in order to integrate that component with the distributed and local energy generation facilities, and to perform smart procedures such as demand management. This paper presents a novel in-house monitoring and control system that meets such requirements. This system represents a key element of the EU FP7 project ENERsip, which aims to reduce electricity consumption within energy-positive neighbourhoods by increasing users' electricity consumption awareness, by acting on the demand side automatically, and by matching consumption with local generation.