Integrating Web-Enabled Energy-Aware Smart Homes to the Smart Grid

Energy conservation is a global issue with great implications. High energy demands and environmental concerns force the transformation of electricity grids into smart grids, towards more rational utilization of energy. Embedded computing and smart metering transform houses into energy-aware environments, allowing residents to make informed choices about electricity. Web technologies are successfully used for managing heterogeneous home devices, facilitating the remote management of the house through Web APIs. Hence, the Web, as an ubiquitous and scalable platform, is suitable for interconnecting energy-aware smart homes and the smart grid. In this paper, we investigate the possibilities created when energy-aware smart homes communicate in near real-time with the smart grid and we propose an architecture for their flexible integration to the grid, through the Web. A proof of concept deployment is performed and general security aspects are discussed. The potential of this Web-based architecture is demonstrated by developing two applications that exploit these new capabilities of smart homes, towards an intelligent grid. Demand response is harnessed to schedule electricity-related tasks for future execution and load shedding is employed to reduce the total load for avoiding outages. Finally, issues such as peak leveling, fault tolerance, billing and a market for energy are briefly discussed. Keywords-Smart Home; Smart Grid; Web; Web of Things; REST; Smart Power Outlets; Demand Response; Load Shedding; Security.