Towards sustainable smart cities: Integration of home energy management system for efficient energy utilization

Abstract

Smart Homes (SHs) play a crucial role in the broader context of smart cities, contributing to the overall efficiency, sustainability, and quality of life for residents. This work presents a computationally efficient mathematical model for Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) to activate the Demand Side Management (DSM) while minimizing the energy consumption costs of SHs. The proposed model is represented as a standard Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) optimization problem. The proposed HEMS provides the optimal scheduling of home appliances and plugging time for charging Electric Vehicles (EV) at home. The main objective of this optimization problem is to minimize the electricity bills while improving the load profile of the distribution system in the context of smart cities. In this study, load management for a typical household has been studied considering several electricity tariffs in Portugal. The simulation results confirm that in the presence of the proposed HEMS, the electricity bill will be effectively reduced while consumer behavior is changed. The cost savings that can be attained through only shifting loads is 5.7 %, while it can reach 67.65 % by installing a hybrid energy system at the studied smart home. The weekly cost reduction percentage due to charging the EV at home is around 16.24 % compared to charging the EV using public charging stations regardless of the traveling time and waiting at the public charging stations.