Power-Grid Load Balancing by Using Smart Home Appliances

Climate change is one of the greatest environmental, social and economic threats facing the planet, and can be mitigated by increasing the efficiency of the electric power generation and distribution system. Dynamic demand control is a low-cost technology that fosters better load balancing of the electricity grid, and thus enable savings on CO₂ emissions at power plants. This paper discusses a practical and inexpensive solution for the implementation of dynamic demand control, based on a dedicated peripheral for a general-purpose microcontroller. Pre-production test of the peripheral has been carried out by emulating the actual microprocessor. Simulations have been carried out, to investigate actual efficacy of the proposed approach.