Energy and Power Engineering, 2013, 5, 824-827
doi:10.4236/epe.2013.54B158 Published Online July 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/epe)
Interaction Research on the Smart Power Consumption
Suxiang Zhang1, Jianming Liu1, Suxian Zhang2, Jinping Cao1
1State Grid Information & Telecommunication Co., Ltd. Beijing
2Department of foreign language of Hebei university, Baoding, China
Received March, 2013
ABSTRACT
Due to the rapid growth of the air condition ing load of the residents had bigger impact on power grid safety and power
smooth operation, in order to improve energy conservation and reduce emissions of the residents, many countries had
studied the home energy management system (HEMS) in the world. In this paper, based on the summary of the work of
other countries, the HEMS research and practice situation of China were discussed, combined with the national devel-
opment and reform commission (NDRC) project, the power consumption visualization empirical research had been car-
ried on in different cities in 2012, the interaction results show that the load can be reduced by an average of 6.67%,
which proved that the electricity interactive was very interesting for long-term strategy of energy conservation and
emissions reduction.
Keywords: HEMS; Smart Power Consumption; Load Regulation and Control; Power Consumption Visualization
1. Introduction
A smart grid is an electrical grid that uses information
and communications technology to gather and act on
information, such as information about the behaviors of
suppliers and consumers, in an automated fashion to im-
prove the efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustain-
ability of the production and distribution of electricity [1].
The smart grid also allows for systematic communication
between suppliers and consumers, and permits both to be
more flexible and sophisticated in their operational
strategies. The overall effect is a signal that awards en-
ergy efficiency and energy consumption that is sensitive
to the time-varying limitations of the supply.
In recent years, with the rapid development of econ-
omy and the improvement of people’s living standard,
power tense situation had been more and more obvious,
Load management [2] is very essential to the operation of
power companies, which can enhance the energy-eff-
icient and reliable operation of power system, and we
need to build the flexible and intelligent energy systems,
that are able to meet the goals set for reducing CO2
emissions as well as to ensure security of supply in the
future.
In this paper, we paid some attentions for home energy
management systems (HEMS) in the smart grid, the con-
tents of this paper are as following: section 2 introduced
some practices in other countries; based on the modern
communication and information processing, China HEMS
was proposed and discussed in section 3; in section 4, we
introduce some achievements in our HEMS work; finally
is conclusions.
2. Related Works in Other Countries
Controlling electricity consumption is one of the key
features within future smart community. HEMS have
played a role this by controlling Home appliances through
Home Appliance control interface. Many countries in the
world have studied HEMS as following:
In South Korean [3], the increasing demand of elec-
tricity along with increased efficiency requirement cre-
ates new opportunities for the development of demand
side management programs. However, due to the low
residential electricity costs, consumers lack the under-
standing of the smart grid, reluctant to buy smart grid
related equipment and products, making the smart grid
market it are difficult to generate revenues. South Korea's
knowledge econo my ministry had decided to invest 2547
billion won from 2009 to 2012 in developing smart grid
commercial technology, the sensors were installed in
power stations, transmission equipment and electrical
appliances product, which was known as “green electric-
ity IT” project.
In Canada [4], HEMS are integral to the aspects of
Smart Grid that are on the customer side of the electricity
meter and will provide the means for customers to exert
control over and maximize the efficiency of energy use
within their homes. Ontario Power Company had de-
ployed smart meters over 80 distribution companies;

S. X. ZHANG ET AL. 825
smart meter installation number has reached 4.6 million.
Ontario Power Company had cooperation with Trilliant,
Elster, Sensus, SilverSpring and Tantalus company, who
had deployed five different types AMI respectively,
which can make HEMS market application to became
reality, to help residents are more "smart" electricity.
In USA [5] the Green Button initiative is an indus-
try-led effort that responds to a White House call-to-ac-
tion to provide utility customers with easy and secure
access to their energy usage information in a consumer-
friendly and computer-friendly format. Customers are
able to securely download their own detailed energy us-
age with a simple click of a literal “Green Button” on
electric utilities’ websites. With their own data in hand,
consumers can take advantage of a growing array of on-
line services to help them manage energy use and save
on their bills.
In Japan [6] The Ministry of Economy, Trade and In-
dustry (METI) has decided to recommend Echonet-Lite
as the standard interface for connecting electric appli-
ances and electronic equipment in the home to a HEMS.
METI had defined the HEMS protocols and commands
for connection with appliances equipped with the Echo-
net-Lite interface, so that home electric appliances with
the Echonet-Lite interface can be commercialized in time
to contribute to power saving. With in creasing awareness
of environmental issues and concerns over the supply of
electricity in Japan since the Great East Japan Earth-
quake, energy saving measures for the home is becoming
a pressing need. In response to that need, Panasonic has
developed the Smart Home Energy Management System
(SMARTHEMS) to help create, store, use and manage
energy efficiently. Data concerning electricity, gas and
water consumption is measured in real time, and users
can for example monitor the current charging status of
storage batteries and solar power generation systems and
see the CO2 balance for the entire home, giving an in-
sight into energy usage and ways of further saving en-
ergy in the home [7].
3. Interaction Research in China
3.1. Definition of the HEMS
In China [8], the Smart grid is the highly integrated by
the modern technology and the strong network, which
can maximize accept clean energy, achieve a low carbon
green life, and improv e the stability of the power grid, so
it is the new modern grid. In the power consumption link,
in this paper, we only had studied on HEMS, firstly, we
will give the definition of the HEMS: the network inter-
action and instant connection can be realized between
users and family electrical equipments, and between us-
ers and power grid companies through a series of equip-
ment with the following functions: energy consumption
acquisition, equipment control, interaction with users,
and interaction with the grid, and realize the management
of home energy consumption to help the user saving en-
ergy.
The HEMS system has played an important role to
achieve the family energy efficiency management, which
had decided the interactive manner, communication
technology and procedure between the users and the
power grid, and between intelligent h ome appliances and
the power grid.
HEMS were installed in the residents home as shown
in Figure 1, the electricity information using wirelessly
(433 MHZ) way were sent to the HEMS Intelligent ga-
teway by using of the smart sockets, which included
washing machine, refrigerator, air conditioner and other
high-power power consumption equipment, so we com-
pleted the data collection tasks. Users can interact through
HEMS terminals (using WiFi way) to see their electricity
data; Moreover, the real-time power consumption infor-
mation were remotely transmitted to the master station
through HEMS intelligent gate and optical fibe r compos-
ite low voltage cables (OPLC), when people want to know
his power consumption information, they can brows ter-
minal; at the same time, other service can be proposed by
other companies using our HEMS system, such as seeing
hd movie, order foods, telemedicine and so on. Moreover,
clean energy can be used in family, transmission and
distribution infrastructure will be better able to handle
possible bidirectional energy flows, allowing for distrib-
uted generation such as from photovoltaic panels on
building roofs.
3.2. Key Products
To realize the HEMS, the key equipments were re-
searched such as air-conditioning, air-conditioning fan,
these equipments need information interaction with user,
for example, the user can know the power consumption
of the air-conditioning and load period, but now, lack of
Figure 1. HEMS family architecture.

S. X. ZHANG ET AL.
826
the functions in China, the Media manufacture etc. had
produced some intelligent home appliance, but the price
is very expensive. What can we do more? According to
HEMS system application requirements, the HEMS ter-
minal, smart socket, intelligent gateway and other hard-
ware products had been researched. HEMS terminal(as
shown in Figure 2) can be used to monitor and manage
the family electrical equipment, which can collect and
analyze for the electric power quality and power con-
sumption information, to guide the users for the reason-
able power consumption, to adjust grid load shift, and
realize the smart power consumption between the power
grid and users. The intelligent gateway (as shown in
Figure 3) is the family control hub, mainly to achieve the
information collection and forwarding, such as security
alarm, home appliances, electric data and all kinds of
control information. It is interacted with the HEMS ter-
minal and other products through the network. Smart
socket (as shown in Figure 4) can acquire the real-time
electric power data, and remotely control on-off state by
using the equipment (HEMS terminal or computer) and
can remotely monitor appliances work state to help user
reasonable electric consumption. Some energy man-
agement software had also been developed as shown in
Figure 5.
Figure 2. HEMS terminal.
Figure 3. HEMS intelligent gateway.
Figure 4. Smart socket.
Figure 5. Home energy efficiency management assistant.
Figure 6. Communication architecture of HEMS.
In Figure 6, we show that the communication archi-
tecture of HEMS, In the HEMS, many communication
technologies had been used. In the family LAN, such as
Wi-Fi, Zigbee, RF433, power line broadband or power
line narrowband and so on. The information comes from
home distributed power and the smart meter will be inte-
grated in the local access network, here, optical commu-
nication and the power line broadband can be used.
Through the distribution area, here, using of the optical
fiber communication. The final information can be re-
motely transferred to the master station.
3.3. Communication Architecture of HEMS
To reduce demand during the high cost peak usage peri-
ods, communications and metering technologies inform
smart devices in the home when energy demand is high
and track how much electricity is used and when it is
used. It also gives utility companies the ability to reduce
consumption by communicating to devices directly in
order to prevent system overloads.
In the HEMS, many communication technologies had
been used. In the family LAN, such as Wi-Fi, Zigbee,
RF433, power line broadband or power line narrowband
and so on. The information comes from home distributed
power and the smart meter will be integrated in the local

S. X. ZHANG ET AL.
827
access network, here, optical communication and the
power line broadband can be used. Through the distribu-
tion area, here, using of the optical fiber communication.
The final information can be remotely transferred to the
master station.
4. Further Work
In July 2011, the national development and reform com-
mission suggests because the air conditioning load of the
residents and business users rapid crease, cause to the
great influence of the power grid security and stable op-
eration, how to control the air condition ing load power is
the research content of the power demand side manage-
ment. To research this, in 2012, we had chosen the four
cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanchang and Yinchuan and
recruited some volunteers. In these cities, smart commu-
nities had been built and many people had installed
HEMS in their home, we carried on the empirical re-
search for power consumption visualization to achieve
the influence of power consumption visualization on the
user behavior and the electric power load; when the
power load is peak, the company will send a message to
these volunteers, the volunteers would like to close the
air conditioning and other high power appliances in time,
our experiment time is in 2012.6-2012.9, the Load reduction
results were shown in Table 1(not include Nanchang).
From the different cities, we knew that the load reduc-
tion rate had been realized with the different levels, which
showed the power consumption visualization could en-
hance the user saving energy sense, and further reduce
the difference between peak and valley and Smooth load
curve.
Table 1. Empirical research results.
City Data term Kw
The Maximum load 37.46
The minimum load 4.83
The difference b etween Peak and valley 32.63
Beijing
Load reduction rate 6.82%
The Maximum load 44.9
The minimum load 5.49
The difference b etween Peak and valley 39.41
Shanghai
Load reduction rate 8.77%
The Maximum load 25.7
The minimum load 1.64
The difference b etween Peak and valley 24.06
Yinchuan
Load reduction rate 4.43%
5. Conclusions
The interaction on the smart power consumption can be
researched; we gave the definition of home energy man-
agement system in this paper, discussed its related
HEMS system structure and communication technology,
and elaborated the practice and further work in the field
of HEMS. Through an empirical study for power con-
sumption visualization in the different cities, experiment
showed that interaction could reduce electricity load dif-
ference between peak and valley, and smooth the load
curve. Along with further construction and promotion of
the smart grid, the energy consciousness of the user can
be improved, and the slogan “in telligent po wer consump-
tion, better life” will be became the main goal of the life.
6. Acknowledgements
This work was supported by National High-tech R&D
Program of China (863 Program) (No. 2011AA05A116),
National major projects of science and technology: Col-
laborative network control platform and the key tech-
nology of ubiquitous networks under multi-terminal
(2011ZX03005-004-01); the National Basic Research
Program of China (973 Program): Basic theor y and prac-
tice research of Internet of Things (2011CB302900).
The work was also supported by science and technol-
ogy project of State Grid Corporation (Smart power
consumption empirical study)
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