A new software tool to highlight money savings from a demand-side management system for home appliances

Abstract

In this article, a new software tool named “ECCO” is introduced. This one is intended to highlight money savings from a home electricity management system. The simulation is based on a complete database of real electricity consumption patterns of AC loads. Two case studies are particularly described to point out the relevance of such a simulation tool. The first one consists in postponing the power demand using the delay start function of home appliances. The second one enables to smooth the electricity consumption from a storage system coupled with a converter. The management strategy described in this article uses the difference between electricity prices in peak time and off-peak time. The results demonstrate that this strategy is currently not profitable in France, but it is much more cost-effective in countries, such as in Australia, where this gap of pricing is higher.