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Residential Energy Applications - Reality Behind Home Control
E SOURCE, May 2003, Pages: 28
The term 'smart home' means different things to different people. Often, the phrase conjures up a utopian vision of a futuristic lifestyle. Over the past 10 years, multiple smart home technologies have emerged and entered the consumer mainstream. These include networks of home PCs and peripherals, security monitoring, Internet-enabled appliances, and entertainment options such as streaming audio and video.
This report focuses on residential energy applications enabled by smart home technologies. We use the terms 'smart home' and 'home control' to refer to an energy management system that ties into HVAC, lighting, and appliances and offers residents the ability to control the energy usage in their home locally and remotely using a PC, personal digital assistant, or mobile phone. Typically, this same system also gives the utility control of energy usage in the home in response to power shortages, system constraints, or spiking wholesale prices.
The market drivers for home control have evolved over the past 20 years in response to numerous economic, technological, and market changes. Several factors continue to spur interest in technologies that enable control of energy-consuming appliances in the home. Yet significant challenges also exist—including the challenge of persuading decision-makers for utilities and energy service providers to invest in such a program.
For the utility industry, the future of home control appears to be focused not on the cool, ultramodern capabilities of smart home technologies but rather on providing energy management systems that offer load management capabilities, convenience, and energy-bill savings for residential customers through remote control of energy-consuming devices in the home.
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