Implementing a mobile application for spontaneous peak shaving of home electricity

Electricity peak shaving is a promising approach to energy saving at home. The conventional peak shaving has been conducted in an automatic and system-centric approach, using the emerging home energy management systems (HEMS). However, for more sustainable energy-saving, it is also important to develop a human-centric approach, which encourages residents to perform energy-saving behaviors by themselves. In this paper, we present a smartphone application, named Peak Cutter, which assists home users to perform spontaneous peak shaving. Cooperating with a home network system, Peak Cutter monitors electricity demand in a house, and notifies the user via a smartphone when the demand exceeds a threshold. The user then checks the current energy consumption of each home appliance, and can remotely turn off some appliances to shave the peak. We have also conducted an experiment, where five subjects tried to save energy of our laboratory using Peak Cutter. It was shown that a certain amount of energy was reduced within the one-week experiment, and that Peak Cutter promoted energy-saving attitudes of most of the subjects.