Decentralised Energy Management for Smart Homes

Abstract

The electrical grid is expected to be faced with enormous challenges in the future by integrating fluctuating power plants using renewable resources (solar, wind) and by the increasing number of electrical vehicles. This article focuses on an energy management to balance electrical supply and demand in the energy grid. External signals, reflecting the low voltage grid’s state, are sent to smart-homes, which are able to adapt their energy demand automatically without restraining the smart-home’s resident. To manage the smart-home’s appliances and to effectively integrate electric vehicles as energy storages, decentralised measure- and control-systems are investigated. An hierarchically structured observer/controller architecture, inspired by the organic-computing, is proposed for the system implementation. The aim is a mostly self-organised system which reduces the interaction between the smart-home resident and its appliances to a minimum.