Design and construction of an embedded system for measuring power of house appliances

The excessive usage of energy has become a threat to energy crisis, global climate and humanity, therefore, it is mandatory to develop proper energy saving and management technologies. The electricity sector is one of the main contributors to the global energy balance, which now accounts for 30% of total electricity consumption in developed countries in the housing sector. Over the last decade, energy management has been a hot topic across the whole world. Despite of upgrading the electricity grid to the smart grid for saving and efficient use of energy and involving householders to demand response via smart meter, household appliances always find it difficult to manage and handle their energy consumption. Unmanaged energy consumption also has a negative effect on the consumer's budget. The thesis presents a smart plug device which provides features to measure and display energy consumption. Furthermore, the smart plugs wirelessly communicate with a proposed framework on a PC enables home energy management, which can offer seamless customer participation without sacrificing customer comfort by providing a schedule plan for home appliances usage based on an appropriate load definition and the time of use pricing. This way the system could encourage more homeowner to participate in such program and alleviate the problem of peak load situation, while a significant amount of generation asset is used for the time during the peak demand. The results showed the effectiveness of using the smart plug on energy consumption rate during peak hours.