Reference Design for Residential
Energy Gateway
UC Berkeley, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
Principle Investigator: Professor Dave Auslander
Graduate Student Researcher: Daniel Arnold
Graduate Student Researcher: Kevin Ding
Undergraduate Student Researcher: Halley Hardiman
Project Overview
Residential electrical load management is a critical part of much of the functionality proposed for the Smart Grid. The United States Department of Energy Smart Grid Initiative places substantial emphasis on consumer inclusion and resident energy education as part of this effort. With essentially nothing in place at present to implement residential load management in an open fashion, this project is focused on putting a functional reference design together that can demonstrate that such a system is technically, economically, and socially feasible. The Residential Energy Gateway will function as the hub of the Home Energy Network (HEN), also referred to as the Home Area Network (HAN). The REG is designed to provide widespread communication and control for residential appliances. Information regarding the connected appliances is to be relayed to the resident in an efficient and useful manner.
When completed, the vision is that such a system would be able to:
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Communicate with an outside entity to determine the current and/or future cost
of electricity and system status (normal, emergency, partial curtailment, etc.)
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Know from previous communication with the resident(s) how to prioritize various
load usages against price, time of-day, day-of-the-week, weather, etc.
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Communicate with an electric meter (either the revenue meter or a separate meter)
to determine current whole house electricity usage.
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Communicate with electrical loads (appliances) to control or suggest current
and/or future operation.
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Communicate with loads to determine power usage.
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Display relevant information to residents.
- Accept input from residents to change (override) current operating conditions.
Unfortunately, while a many smart appliances have the ability to communicate with external entities, some might utilize ZigBee (a proprietary standard) or Zwave, others rely on Wi-Fi or Ethernet. What results from this is a hodgepodge of devices that lack the ability to interoperate, which is intimidating to consumers. For that reason, the REG is being developed as an open platform, with the ability to communicate over the majority of standards in the residential appliance space. In addition, the modularity of the Gateway software allows new standards to be more easily integrated. A logic diagram for REG is shown in Figure 1. As the figure shows, within the HEN, the Gateway is able to communicate with all residential appliances, the smart meter, the HVAC system, and on site local generation. In addition the Gateway is the portal through which HAN information is linked with the outside world (the smart meter periodically communicates with the utility). Perhaps most importantly, the Gateway connects to a resident user interface, through which information about all other connected elements can be viewed.
Figure 1-Conceptual overview of REG in the context of the Home Energy Network (HEN) and interacting with the outside world.
We are currently in the third phase of this project. In Phase 1, we were tasked to develop a conceptual reference design to demonstrate the feasibility of the existence of such a device. In Phase 2, having demonstrated feasibility, a prototype reference software package was developed. In Phase 3, our tasking is to investigate advanced issues related to residential energy management and to continually refine the REG prototype.
This work is sponsored by the California Energy Commission (CEC) and the California Institute for Energy and the Environment (CIEE)