Smart power meters in augmented reality environment for electricity consumption awareness

Abstract

Reducing or optimizing electrical power consumption is one of the most fundamental goals within the current frameworks of smart energy management. This approach would be spread from the industrial plants, characterized by high consumptions often well distributed throughout the day, down to the domestic utilities, typically discontinuous and with limited consumption at the single user level. More specifically, it is desirable for the latter case to be able to control in a simple and effective way the power consumption of typical household appliances by means of technologies that are already used and spread (such as tablets and smartphones) to become aware of their actual impact, both economic and environmental. To this aim, the authors present the proof-of-principle of user-friendly monitoring system for power consumption awareness based on the recent technologies of Internet of Things (IoT) and Augmented Reality (AR). In particular, common devices such as smartphones associated along with appropriate measurement nodes and a suitable app, developed to the purpose, allow consumers to view in AR environment electrical consumption of their domestic electrical loads to consciously decide whether to switch them off. Performance of both sensor nodes and AR environment were preliminarily assessed in either laboratory experiments or actual household context, highlighting the promising effectiveness of the proposed approach.