Saving energy in smart homes with minimal comfort level reduction

In this paper, we propose an energy-saving device control method with the minimal reduction of user´s comfort level. Given the past histories of device´s states and the target energy-saving ratio, our method first assigns each device the weight proportional to the comfort level deterioration when reducing energy supply to the device by a unit of energy and reduces more energy supply from less weighted devices, in order to achieve the target-energy-saving ratio. Moreover, we propose a method for constructing power consumption models of devices based on measurements of actual power consumption of real devices and a method for constructing comfort level functions of users based on the questionnaires. Through simulations, we confirmed that the proposed method achieves the target energy saving ratio with small comfort level reduction.