HAC: Hardware design for a Smart-Home and Smart-Grid decentralised load management system

The growth of energy demand and decentralised renewable energy generation (e.g. photovoltaic, eolic) can lead to electric grid imbalances requiring extra investments in the electric grid infrastructure. One of the goals of Smart-Home and Smart-Grid solutions is to solve this issue. The majority of the solutions are focused on centralised load management. Furthermore most of the Smart-Home and Smart-Grid publications analyse the topics from the application point of view so that there is a lack of specific descriptions of the infrastructure and of the used technology. SUPSI has proposed and verified a decentralised and innovative Smart-Grid approach. To demonstrate the feasibility of this approach a custom HAC (Household Appliance Controller) and a communication infrastructure has been developed. This paper describes this design, and its use in several pilot projects performed in Switzerland (Swiss2Grid, RiParTi 2.0, HCD 2.0) which in their turn have demonstrate the feasibility and the benefits of a decentralised Smart-Grid management.