Concurrent simulation platform for energy-aware smart metering systems

We propose a simulation framework that can model a house equipped with various home appliances and next-generation smart metering devices. This simulator can predict the power dissipation profiles of individual appliances as well as the cumulative energy consumption of the house in a realistic manner. We utilize SystemC, a concurrent system-modeling methodology originally developed and populated in the design automation community. According to our experiments with various consumer electronics devices, the simulated and measured power profiles match very closely, producing the average correlation of 0.973. The deviation of simulated energy consumption from the measurement was also negligible. Using the proposed simulation platform, any electricity consumer interested in energy saving as well as the designer of a new smart metering system will be able to simulate and test their system from energy perspectives. As a case study, we show how the size of the accumulative power peak of a house can be reduced significantly by using the information provided by the proposed simulator.