A model of domestic energy management enabling low-cost technology

This paper focuses on designing process of a micro-controller based system with remote control interface to be used for home automation and demand-side automatic meter reading (AMR). The system consists of a master node called energy modem (EM) and many slave nodes called energy appliance controller (ECs). The bi-directional and asynchronous power line communication (PLC) links among energy modem and energy load controllers were successfully established. Energy metering, reporting, and control strategies are presented and several electrical protection features of this system are described in the thesis. System also provides the friendly remote user interface through the Global System for Mobile (GSM). The most potential perspective of this system is low-cost technologies associated with existing infrastructures. This thesis would explain ways to prevent the asynchronous transmission errors and data collusions during communication between energy modem and energy load controllers. The general multi-path problems in communication have been solved for the low-cost PLC by using appropriate algorithms. A group of test was conducted to evaluate the efficiency of this new communication channel. Simple analysis is presented in this thesis to obtain the transmission error probability, and then some optimizations would be suggested for the future research.