Bit-Watt home system with hybrid power supply

This paper introduces a basic architecture of Bit-Watt home system, one target of which is to optimize the energy consumption of home appliances. The Bit-Watt system consists of intelligent home appliances, a home energy server, and hybrid power supplies. We introduce an energy cost model and propose a proactive energy management approach for the home system. The proposed approach applies time-shift operation to home appliances according to the cost of power supplies. We evaluate the performance of energy management by computer simulation. The simulation result reveals that the proposed approach enables the optimization of energy cost in the home system with hybrid power supplies.