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Smart Plug for Household Appliances

Authors:
N. Prayongpun
N. Prayongpun
N. Prayongpun
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V. Sittakul at King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok
V. Sittakul
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Abstract

A common home consists of some electrical loads such as lighting, laundry appliances, kitchen appliances, climate control equipment, entertainment devices, etc. All devices consume lots of electric power in spite of being on their standby mode. In this chapter, programmable smart plugs with bundled ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4) are introduced without the need of replacing the present appliances. The implemented software allows programming, controlling and real-time monitoring over TCP/IP platform. Furthermore, an energy management system with smart plugs is also proposed in the system framework to efficiently utilize the energy consumption.
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1
Abstract—A common home consists of some electrical loads
such as lighting, laundry appliances, kitchen appliances, climate
control equipment, entertainment devices, etc. All devices
consume lots of electric power in spite of being on their standby
mode. In this paper, programmable smart plugs with bundled
ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4) are introduced without the need of
replacing the present appliances. The implemented software
allows programming, controlling and real-time monitoring over
TCP/IP platform. Furthermore, an energy management system
with smart plugs is also proposed in the system framework to
efficiently utilize the energy consumption.
Index Terms—Smart plug, IEEE 802.15.4, TCP/IP,
programming, controlling, real-time monitorin, Zigbee
I. INTRODUCTION
Resident and commercial buildings are the main users
where consume the electrical energy over 20% of the overall
energy used. To monitor and control the energy consumption
in each area, an intelligent technology with efficient planning
of energy utilization is indispensable. Therefore, many
researches focus on smart grid, energy management, zero
waste technologies. Smart and green technologies are one of
the most important research issues in order to save energy and
decrease pollution emission [1, 2].
In the last decade, many smart electrical grid technologies
with smart meters are introduced in many countries. Its
objective is to reduce operation cost and to improve the
quality of electricity network [3]. However, conventional
smart meters are not sufficiently developed nowadays
because they can only measure the electrical energy
consumption for whole buildings. Thank to the high speed
development in electronic and communication technologies,
each appliance in buildings can be investigated for the overall
energy consumption [4]. A typical home consists of some
electrical loads such as lighting, laundry appliances, kitchen
appliances, climate control equipment, entertainment devices,
etc. A smart device attached to each appliance in this work is
called “smart plug”. All smart plugs will intelligently be
linked inside buildings for energy monitoring, safety and
automation management.
In this paper, the framework of smart plug is proposed in
Section III and implemented with the aim of measuring the
energy consumption with high accuracy and low cost in
section IV. In section V, the conclusion will be presented.
II. RELATED WORKS
Data acquisition and control for smart plug has been
demonstrated in 2013 [1]. In [1], a smart plug with a real-time
energy monitoring system has been developed using Arduino
microcontroller board. In 2014, the data acquisition and
control for smart plug has also been developed so that the
global users can check the status via the GSM technology. As
for the local users, the energy meter around the area can be
controlled for the load usage using Bluetooth technology to
reduce the cost of GSM rental fees [2]. However, as shown in
the previous works, all smart plugs were directly wired-
connected to the Ethernet controllers to begin the data
acquisition via web browsers. In practice, there are many
smart plugs have to be installed in a house and they shall be
wired-connected. Therefore, in this work, the novel concept
of data acquisition and control for smart plug has been
designed based on Zigbee connection among the smart plugs
and embedded web server unit. The X-bee radio modules
(Compliance with Zigbee) are chosen due to their low cost
and make it possible to install in the house, based on IEEE
802.15.4. As shown in the next section, the framework system
is introduced.
III. PROPOSED FRAMEWORK
The proposed hardware system comprises two device
categories: one is Smart Plug (SP) and other one is Embedded
Web Server (EWS). Both categories can communicate with
the other on the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless sensor network as
shown in Figs.1 and 2. A smart plug can be employed into two
modes: manual and automatic modes. In manual mode, a
smart plug is similar to the conventional plug. But in
automatic mode, the smart plugs can be controlled via a web
browser.
Figure 1 demonstrate the block diagram of the proposed
smart plug composed of a current-voltage sensing circuit
(based on ACS712), microcontroller board (based on
ATmega328), LCD display and wireless sensor module
(based on 2mW X-bee). In Fig.2, the embedded web server
system consists of the microcontroller (ATmega 2460),
wireless sensor module, DP83848V Ethernet module and
display module.
Smart Plugs for household appliances
N.prayongpun1, V.sittakul2
#Electronics Engineering Technology, College of Industrial Technology, King Mongkut's
University of Technology North Bangkok, 1518 Pracharat 1 Road,Wongsawang, Bangsue,
Bangkok 10800, Thailand
nuttapolprayongpun@hotmail.com1, Vitawat.sittakul@gmail.com2
(66)2-087 35361932
2
Current-voltage
sensing circuit
AC
line
Arduino
ATmega328 ZigBee module
Smart plug (SP)
DC supply
LCD display
Fig.1: Block diagram of proposed smart plug
Ethernet module
DP83848V
Arduino
ATmega2560 ZigBee module
Embedded web server (EWS)
DC supply
Web
browser
Fig.2: Block diagram of embedded web server
Figure 3 shows the sequent flow of the communication
between a smart plug and an embedded web server. When an
appliance is connected to the smart plug (SP), the SP will send
the registration message to the embedded web server (EWS)
via a ZigBee network. The EWS will collect the data and reply
with the time slot and the time reference. After finishing the
initialization, the SP can regularly transmit the energy
consumption data at the given time slot until the appliance is
unused. All mobile devices with web browser, such as labtop,
tablet and mobile-phone, can monitor the energy consumption
in real-time and also control the electric transmission by
turning ON /OFF.
Embedded
Web Server
Smart Plug
(SP)
Detect an
electric
appliance
Send registration of SP
and an detected appliance
Send back response of the
registration to SP
Send periodically the data
during the time slot
Save the
information
and set the
time slot
Send termination on use
Save the
information
Send back the response of the
termination on use to SP
Fig.3: Communication sequence between SP and EWS
IV. SYSTEM IMPLEMENT AND RESULTS
Figure 4 shows photos of the prototype of smart plug and
embedded web server. The software used for web server
development is based on HTML5 and PHP languages as can
be seen in Fig.5. The electrical data are collected by smart
plug for every two seconds and are
preprocessed for calculating the min-max energy
consumption before the smart plug will send the data back to
the embedded web server.
(a)
(b)
Fig.4: (a) prototype of the smart plug and (b) prototype of
the embedded web server
Fig.5: Web page for controlling via smart plug
The next step of implementation of smart plug is the
calibration to obtain the highest accuracy of the power
consumption measurement as much as possible. As the
microcontroller is used to calculate the power consumption of
appliance using the current-voltage sensing circuit, the
calibration process would be done properly. The power
analyzer (HIOKI 3380) with a variable dummy load is
employed for the calibration process. In order to reduce the
tolerance less than 2%, the polynomial estimation technique
has to be used.
Table 1 shows the testing comparison between the power
analyzer and smart plug for different loads. Consequently, the
average tolerance of current, voltage and power are 1.143%,
0.142% and 1.174%, respectively. The measured power
values from smart plug are compared to that from HIOKI
3380 as shown in Fig.6.
Load
(Watt)
HIOKI 3380
Smart plug
Voltage
(Volt)
Current
(Amp)
Power
(Watt)
Voltage
(Volt)
Current
(Amp)
Power
(Watt)
Voltage
(%)
Current
(%)
Power
(%)
25
223.35
0.110
0.025
223.02
0.102
0.023
0.148
7.273
7.198
50
222.90
0.216
0.048
222.26
0.213
0.047
0.287
1.389
1.871
75
222.51
0.323
0.072
221.94
0.327
0.072
0.256
1.238
0.836
100
222.08
0.441
0.098
222.35
0.449
0.100
0.122
1.814
1.839
3
125
222.05
0.548
0.122
221.41
0.555
0.123
0.288
1.277
1.235
150
221.88
0.654
0.145
221.32
0.660
0.146
0.252
0.917
0.482
175
222.39
0.761
0.169
222.34
0.764
0.170
0.022
0.394
0.354
200
221.96
0.886
0.197
221.63
0.884
0.196
0.149
0.226
0.560
300
221.36
1.315
0.292
221.59
1.311
0.290
0.104
0.304
0.412
400
220.50
1.752
0.386
220.41
1.757
0.387
0.041
0.285
0.285
500
220.00
2.184
0.481
220.13
2.190
0.482
0.059
0.275
0.229
600
219.26
2.615
0.573
219.38
2.613
0.573
0.055
0.076
0.035
700
218.67
3.045
0.667
218.63
3.049
0.669
0.018
0.131
0.330
800
218.72
3.485
0.762
219.12
3.499
0.768
0.183
0.402
0.774
Table 1: Tolerance of current, voltage and power
Fig.6: Comparison of measured power values
between SP and HIOKI3380.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper presents a low cost smart plug with a tolerance
under 2%. The simple algorithm is implemented for
monitoring and controlling the energy consumption. In this
work, it is possible to use the zigbee concept to implement the
wireless communication between the smart plugs and the
embedded base server for monitoring and controlling the
electrical power energy usage.
VI. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the departments of
electronic and electric engineering technology for their
collaboration, financial support and equipment support.
REFERENCES
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... For further Wi-Fi processing and communication, the ESP8266 module and Arduino microcontroller have been used to classify devices using smart sockets in real-time [2]. A programmable smart plug with bundled Zigbee is presented, requiring switching of the present loads [3]. It can estimate the energy consumption of interconnected devices with low tolerance values. ...
... Domestic and commercial sectors are the primary consumers of electrical energy and have collectively consumed over 20% of the total energy usage [3]. For observing and regulating energy consumption in every region, smart technology with effective energy consumption forecasting is crucial. ...
... Green and smart energy technologies have become a significant research concern these days for conserving energy and reducing the emission of pollution. In the last decade, many smart grid techniques and smart meters are familiarized in various countries to diminish the operation charges [3]. These are used to develop the efficiency of the power network. ...
View
... Several other researches in which various HEMS technologies were used demonstrate smart solutions for managing and controlling energy consumption in a smart homes system. In order to provide security to the user, they have shown to have good usability and satisfactorily answered the purpose of performing intelligent measurement and monitoring [24][25][26][27]. ...
... Prayongpun and Sittakul [26] show an electrical outlet consisting of the ATmega328 microcontroller and is based on the ZigBee Protocol, which contains devices that are used to set up a wireless transmission between the sensors, the web server, and the smart sockets. In addition, this system performs the function of measuring voltage along with electrical current and power consumption and makes this information available to the consumer, who can be allowed to monitor electricity consumption in real time via devices with a web browser, and interfere by interrupting the electricity transmission to the sockets if necessary. ...
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