Automatic Standby Power Management Using Usage Profiling and Prediction

Reducing the standby power used by home appliances is critical in a household energy management system. Although significant effort has been made to minimize the standby power use of appliances, manual operation is still required to eliminate standby power usage. Additionally, the current regulation strategy of standby power typically focuses on real-power consumption, and it does not consider the apparent power and power factors. We propose an automatic standby power reduction system that is based on user-context profiling. Our system profiles and analyzes the occupancy pattern, as well as the appliance usage. The system then actively manages standby power utilization by predicting the probabilities of future appliance usage. We built a prototype smart meter to monitor and control the power lines. We also developed software that implements the proposed scheme. Our experiments, conducted for three to five weeks in four households, show that power consumption in standby mode can be reduced.