Energy smart house architecture for a smart grid

Electricity consumption in the residential sector has been steadily increasing in the last few decades. In a Smart Grid context, it is expected that the traditional consumer will become a prosumer (simultaneously producer and consumer) and tariffs will be dynamic. Therefore, an Automated Metering Infrastructure will be required, which will go beyond the house smart meters up to the individual appliances providing adequate real-time information relevant to the end-user decisions on electricity consumption of several loads, generation (namely micro wind turbines or solar panels) and storage (including electric vehicles). This work presents an architecture proposal for an intelligent and autonomous demand-responsive Energy Management System (EMS), based on a fully interactive Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructure.