Development of Home Energy Management System Using Arduino

K. N. Ramli
1
, A. Joret
2
and N. H. Saad
3

Faculty of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, 86400 Parit Raja, Batu Pahat, Johor
1
khairun@uthm.edu.my,
2
ariff@uthm.edu.my,
3
ratuangsana@gmail.com



ABSTRACT

A new method of integrating arduino with relay
and transistor for home energy management
system is proposed. The arduino is developed as a
controller to manage the lamp, fan and air-
conditioner. It correspond the relay, lamp and fan
via PIR sensor, and air conditioner via temperature
sensor. The energy consumed by the electrical
appliances can be saved by at least 1.5% with the
implementation of arduino.

KEYWORDS

Arduino, energy management, electrical appliances,
PIR sensor, temperature sensor.

1 INTRODUCTION

The need for efficient energy consumption in
building sector particularly for house and office
usage is increasing every year [1]. The energy
consumed by a building is generally connected to
one or more appliances such as the lamp, fan and
air-conditioner. This leads to the idea of zero
energy buildings by implementing photovoltaic
technology as a source to produce a renewable
energy system [2-4] and energy consumed by the
building itself [3, 5]. The buildings provide a
technically reasonable approach to reducing
energy consumption in buildings. In addition, the
implementation of high efficiency lighting and
appliances also contributes to energy efficiency
[6].

Some efforts have been made incorporating
wireless controller into the energy consumption
used by appliances [7-8]. Apart from these
devices, several researches in the published
literature employed Arduino hardware system into
their work [9-17]. The primary advantage of using
arduino is due to the fact that it is an open
hardware platform which allows fast prototype
development using C++. In addition, the
development of the system and troubleshooting
becomes not a complicated part of the overall
research work.

Recently, the authors in [9] suggested an
automated control system for the sterilization
process of biological material. The composed
control system was developed based on arduino
board. The results verified that the system was
capable of sustaining the temperature and pressure
for proper sterilization process. A ubiquitous
healthcare design monitoring system was
proposed by [10] for ubiquitous sensor network in
hospitals and smart home. The healthcare
technology keeps healthcare workers up-to-date
about the latest computer-based solutions for
improving medical care and making healthcare
organizations more efficient. The sensor utilized
the arduino board to send the data to the web
server via wireless module based on 802.11
protocols. The data collected from the patient can
be remotely viewed and analyzed. The arduino
controller board was integrated in the compact
educational mobile robotic [11].

The integration of the device enables the use of
several tools for data analysis, interaction between
multiple robots and sensors. The technique was
validated by means of diverse experimental field
test conducted using different arduino-based
robotic platforms. The researchers in [12]
developed a node of Wireless Sensor Network
(WSN) using arduino development platform for
precision agriculture and family crop application.
The work will allow more effective treatment to
the problems such as energy waste, water,
ISBN: 978-0-9891305-4-7 2014 SDIWC 12

agricultural defensives and irrigation processes.
Some of the researchers combine arduino system
with software [13-16]. The work done by [13]
used arduino microcontroller that communicates
with an android for home automation. The system
implemented a remotely controlled smart home
with basic features that safeguard the resident
comfort and security. Later, the authors in [14]
also employed arduino-android platform to
develop a smart plug that provides real time
update of the energy consumption at the device.
The results obtained using the device showed an
energy saving of fifteen percent. In [15], an
educational environment for online control of a
biped robot using matlab and arduino was
proposed. The features help the students to study
kinematics and dynamics of the robot. The
integration of arduino, android and wiki software
was developed by [16] for machine-to-machine
(M2M) system. The system consists of mobile
terminals (android terminal and arduino) and web
sites (wiki software). The mobile terminal reads
data from the sensors in the Arduino board and
sends the data to a wiki page. The arduino
capability was expanded by adding an 802.15.4
wireless module, in order to expose its
functionality as a web of things node [17]. The
work also described necessary steps to make a
heterogeneous network interoperate and the
implementation of a network stack. In this work,
arduino system is integrated with relay and
transistor for home automation. The arduino is
used as a controller for lamp and fan via PIR
sensor, and air conditioner via temperature sensor.

2 METHODOLOGY


Figure 1. Block diagram for hardware development.

Figure 1 shows the block diagram for hardware
development. In this case, the electrical
equipments that are going to be controlled are
lamp, fan and air-conditioner. Arduino UNO is
firstly programmed to communicate with the
relay. It is designed as a controller to control the
relay that act as a switch.

Relay is used in this circuit because it is an
electrical operated switch that can be connected
directly to the output. The relay switch
connections are usually labeled as command
(COM), normally closed (NC) and normally open
(NO). In switched on state, the circuit will be
connected to COM and NC. On the other hand, the
circuit will be connected to COM and NO in
switched off condition.

Three relays are employed separately in order to
control the electrical equipments. The lamp is
controlled by arduino via the combination of relay
and PIR sensor. Similarly, the fan is controlled by
arduino via the arrangement of relay and PIR
sensor. In contrast, the air-conditioner is
controlled by arduino via the integration of relay
and temperature sensor.

In this work, the lamp, fan and air-conditioner are
rated as 18 W, 80 W and 900 W respectively. PIR
sensor is located at the ceiling one meter after the
entrance door. When PIR sensor detects the
human movement, the lamp will be turned on
automatically. After a period of three minutes, the
lamp will be turned off. Any human movement
will switch on the lamp back.

It is noteworthy that the same controlling system
is used for the fan. The temperature sensor is
located at the wall one meter above the floor. The
integration of arduino with temperature sensor has
the ability to detect the room temperature. The air-
conditioner will be turned on if the room
temperature is higher than 24C. Otherwise, it will
be turned off. The system is designed to maintain
the room temperature at 24C and below.



ISBN: 978-0-9891305-4-7 2014 SDIWC 13

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION


Figure 2. Graph of lamp energy consumption versus time.

Figure 2 shows the energy consumption graph for
lamp. It can be observed that the energy used by
the lamp with arduino was less compared to the
lamp without the implementation of arduino. The
amount of energy saved by the lamp in percentage
varied from 1.5% to 2.7% as shown in Figure 3.



Figure 3. Graph of the percentage of energy saved for lamp
versus time.


Figure 4. Graph of fan energy consumption versus time.


Figure 5. Graph of the percentage of energy saved for fan
versus time.

Figure 4 illustrates the energy consumption graph
for the fan. It can be seen that the energy
consumed by the fan with arduino was less
compared to the fan without the integration of
arduino. The amount of energy saved by the fan in
percentage varied from 1.8% to 2.8% as shown in
Figure 5.



Figure 6. Graph of air-conditioner energy consumption
versus time.


Figure 7. Graph of the percentage of energy saved for air-
conditioner versus time.

Figure 6 depicts the energy consumption graph for
the air-conditioner. It can be noted that the energy
consumed by the air-conditioner with arduino was
less compared to the air-conditioner without the
combination of arduino. The amount of energy
saved by the air-conditioner in percentage varied
from 1.8% to 3.0% as shown in Figure 7.

4 CONCLUSION

In this work, arduino is combined with relay and
transistor for home energy management system.
The arduino is basically programmed as a
controller to communicate with the relay which is
connected with lamp and fan via PIR sensor, and
air conditioner via temperature sensor. It can be
shown from the results that by implementing
arduino, the energy consumed by the electrical
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appliances can be saved. In addition, the system
can also be applied to small scale office building.

5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This work is fully sponsored by MTUN COE
grant (C022). In addition, we would like to
express our sincere thanks to Universiti Tun
Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM).

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