Autonomous water heater current optimizer

This study presents a solution for residents suffering from the grid-rationing problem in their countries, and especially for the ones who benefits from prepaid backup systems such as diesel generators. Usually, the tariff cost is related to the current rate, which is assigned by a circuit breaker that trips when exceeding the current limit. This limitation hampers the users and restricts the operation of some appliances. This issue is treated in a previous study where a controller is designed to control the heater current to extract the maximum available power. The proposed system allows the user to automatically use the remaining current that may exceed its requirement and partially turn on the water heater taking into the consideration the maximum allowed current managed by the circuit breaker. In other words, the system reads the main current consumption and converts the remaining current into heat by partially or completely controlling the water heater, thus, get benefit of all the prepaid power.