Electric Energy Management in the Smart Home: Perspectives on Enabling Technologies and Consumer Behavior

Smart homes hold the potential for increasing energy efficiency, decreasing costs of energy use, decreasing the carbon footprint by including renewable resources, and transforming the role of the occupant. At the crux of the smart home is an efficient electric energy management system that is enabled by emerging technologies in the electricity grid and consumer electronics. This paper presents a discussion of the state of the art in electricity management in smart homes, the various enabling technologies that will accelerate this concept, and topics around consumer behavior with respect to energy usage.