=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Unplugg: A Cloud-based Home Energy Management Platform
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-923/paper13.pdf
|volume=Vol-923
}}
==Unplugg: A Cloud-based Home Energy Management Platform==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-923/paper13.pdf
Unplugg: A Cloud-based Home Energy
Management Platform
Rafael Jegundo1 , Nuno Martins2 , and Jorge Landeck1
1
University of Coimbra - rafael.jegundo@gmail.com, jlandeck@fis.uc.pt
2
Intelligent Sensing Anywhere - nmartins@isa.pt
Abstract. The residential market represents an important part of the
global energy consumption. However it is one of the hardest places to
improve our energy efficiency. Several solutions exist with different ap-
proaches, however their adoption and results are suboptimal. We believe
that this occurs due to the fragmentation of the solutions, up-front costs
and a some lack of focus on the user experience. In this paper, we present
a consumer centric, cloud-based Home Energy Management platform. Its
aims are: to build the foundations of a hardware agnostic solution, sup-
porting the main open data sources available and enlarging the potential
interested consumer base; provide actionable metrics and consumption
simulations that give insight to the user and help understand the im-
pact of habits and choices; explore the potential of Internet of Things
and cloud based energy management; and finally, to achieve in a market-
ready solution that can be sustainable and effectively drive change.
Keywords: Home Energy Management, Cloud, Internet, Internet of
Things, Open Data
1 Introduction
The residential market is responsible for an important part of the global energy
consumption, representing 26,65% [1] in Europe, where 20% [2] of all energy
is wasted. Being a fragmented market [3], and highly dependent on individuals
convictions and circumstances, it presents a great challenge for energy efficiency
increase. There is a crucial effort of promotion and innovation to be made, in
order to effectively execute current energy policies [4, 5] and achieve concrete
results.
Many concepts and market solutions have been developed in the Home En-
ergy Management (HEM) field. Yet the market reality has failed to comply with
expectations [3]. An important issue is the reasonably high cost of energy ’man-
agement systems, which creates a natural entry barrier for the consumer adop-
tion. Most of these systems deliver a home-based solution where the intelligence
of the systems is located in-site. This has its advantages from a technological
stand point, providing a quicker and more effective response. However it has its
drawbacks from a efficiency and business point of view. The up front cost is high,
and quickly loses its novelty for smarter solutions due to its limited upgradabil-
ity. The updates are irregular and the technology loses its novelty quickly due
to the difficulty of upgrading hardware.
An interesting alternative is to move the intelligence to the cloud where it can
be iterated and updated quickly, while leaving just the sensors and actuators in
home. This enables lighter business models with lower costs for the customers up
front. In this way the user can take advantage from the state of the art of HEM
technology and pay by what is effectively used. This results in a more efficient
solution from a data processing point of view; but also from a business point of
view, since the since the cloud based management enables relevant economies of
scale [6].
2 The Unplugg Platform
The cloud potential as base for innovation through open data and communication
has been until now reasonably overlooked where the possible exceptions are the
deprecated Google Power Meter3 and the HITS concept [7]. Herein we explore
a consumer oriented vision of this while making a market-ready solution. The
developed platform is designated as ”unplugg”.
The ultimate goal of this platform is to enable an Internet of Things focused
on energy management, building upon the many interesting concepts on this
field [9]. In order to achieve that, beyond data sources which are already present,
it is necessary to enable innovation in simple and global control solutions and
explore its integration potential through an open platform [3].
2.1 Architecture
The effectiveness of such platform depends on its capability of integrating most
of the main sensoring and actuation solutions. This presents a challenge to sup-
port a broad set of communication protocols. Looking into the power monitoring
systems today, which is more a mature market than the control and actuation,
one can understand that most data can be acquired simply through HTTP which
simplifies its implementation. The exception are the smart meters that use stan-
dards like DLMS [8] which are a lot more powerfull, but also much more complex
to interact with.
In this case, HTTP was selected as a priority in order to support immediately
the market represented by power meters such as Current Cost4 and The Energy
Detective5 . Another key element that make this selection obvious is that the
integration with these systems through HTTP is based on open APIs, unlike
the use of DLMS by utilities which is naturally closed to their infrastructure.
The communication with these systems can also be made through brokers such
3
http://www.google.com/powermeter/about/
4
http://www.currentcost.com/
5
http://www.theenergydetective.com/
as Cosm6 , or in the future the middleware solutions from utilities for which
Tendril7 can be seen as a possible example. A simplified vision of the integration
architecture can be seen in Figure 2.1. This platform is currently deployed in
heroku8 , a Platform as a Service (PaaS) hosting solution built upon Amazon
EC29 that simplifies the administration while keeping the advantages of the
cloud.
Fig. 1. Unplugg Platform architecture
Present systems integrated to the platform are: Cloogy10 , Current Cost Envi,
The Energy Detective and the Tendril API11 . These systems act generally as
energy consumption data sources.
2.2 Internet of Things
Control solutions at low price points start to appear in the market. Examples
of this are Cloogy which offers smart plugs that can be remotely controlled
through an API, and through the just launched Wemo12 from Belkin, which
provides control and movement sensing. This type of integrations are already
present in more early adopter segments where the IFTTT13 association with
Wemo stands out. In this field exciting times are coming with the arrival of the
6
http://cosm.com
7
http://tendrilinc.com/
8
http://heroku.com
9
http://aws.amazon.com/pt/ec2/
10
http://cloogy.com
11
http://dev.tendrilinc.com/
12
http://www.belkin.com/wemo/
13
http://ifttt.com/recipes/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=wemo
Internet of Things and the growing awereness for energy issues, and cloud based
solutions are a natural enabler due to its ubiquity and quick evolution potential.
However this trend will only evolve organically when the more tech enabled
consumers start experimenting and creating mashups between the Internet of
Things, HEM solutions and even other web applications. This makes the offer of
an open, powerful and well documented API a crucial step for the effectiveness
of a platform in this context.
2.3 Data Analysis and Presentation
Web and mobile apps are also a driver for smart energy solutions adoption,
by enabling rich, frequently real-time energy management through already om-
nipresent devices. But these apps require access to actionable, meaningful data
that can be easily crunched in the cloud. For unplugg, an iOS app was devel-
oped that provide actionable metrics which allow users to track progress, and
complements the view offered by the main platform interface.
3 Conclusion
Cloud based energy management presents several advantages comparing with
home based control systems, such as efficiency, low entry barrier, increased ease
of adoption, global and ubiquitous potential of integration. It can hence be a
technological solution to tackle the slow adoption of HEM systems. In this pa-
per a global platform named unplugg was presented. It stands out by enabling
the support of multiple data sources and empower the innovation through the
Internet of Things while keeping a user-centric vision. It is currently in beta at
http://unplu.gg.
References
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2. Marsh B.: Wasted energy. The New York Times (2008)
3. Fatemeh Nikayin. Governance of smart living service platforms: state- of-the-art and
the need for collective action. Third International Engineering Systems Symposium
CESUN 2012, Delft University of Technology, 18-20 June 2012
4. European Commission. Citizens summary. EU climate and energy package (2008)
5. Chopra A., Kundra V., and Weiser P.: A POLICY FRAMEWORK FOR THE 21st
CENTURY GRID: Enabling our secure energy future.
6. Birman K., Ganesh L.: Running Smart Grid Control Software on Cloud Computing
Architectures Next Generation Electric Grid (2011)
7. RP Singh and S Keshav.: HITS: A Cloud-Based Flexible Architecture for Home
Energy Management blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca
8. Bredillet P., Lambert E., and Schultz E.: COSEM Standards Used in a Model Driven
Integration Approach to Build the Smart Grid Service Oriented Architecture. First
IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications, October 2010
9. Dominique Guinard.: Towards the web of things: Web mashups for embedded de-
vices. Workshop on Mashups, Enterprise Mashups (2009)