Smart Home Energy Management System

Demadema, Kwanele (2018) Smart Home Energy Management System. Honours thesis, Murdoch University.

Abstract

The link between fossil generated electricity for home energy use and climate change means that the ever‐rising residential energy requirements contribute significantly to the greenhouse gas emissions and therefore household demand also has a negative impact on the environment. As a result, home energy management has gained significant attention over the years. The anticipated incentive to the home energy user is household energy cost reduction while the network operator gains from peak demand reduction. Effective Demand Response (DR) programs in the form of Smart Home Energy Management systems have the potential to fulfill both the consumer’s and network operator’s expectations. This project analyses the challenges of DR and the effects of incorporating local Renewable Energy (RE) generation to a domestic installation with the aim of turning the household into an energy neutral home whose net annual energy consumption is almost zero. Power demand and the consumption characteristics of households through common household appliances were investigated using smart meters and the associated load profiles. Some of Synergy’s Western Australian (WA) electricity retail tariffs were analysed and applied to the load profile downloads to verify the cost benefits of tariff shopping, standby mode elimination and load shifting. The Homer Pro micro grid analysis tool was used to investigate the possibility of turning a Perth household into an energy neutral home by attempting to match its possible loading with the most viable solar generation system. The results show that the Power Shift (PS1) tariff was the cheapest with a 1.44% cost reduction from the Home plan (A1) project base plan. The cost reduction analysis was performed by applying the House 1 June load profile to all the tariffs considered in this investigation. The research results show that it is possible to achieve an energy neutral home in WA although this would be accompanied by high costs and regulatory restrictions. This thesis project found that about 96% renewable fraction is achievable to typical WA households within reasonable technical, economic and regulatory considerations.

Item Type:	Thesis (Honours)
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Engineering and Information Technology
Supervisor(s):	Shafuillah, GM
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/44789

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