Management and control of energy use in homes and buildings

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The household and building sectors are a significant consumer of energy in Canada, residential energy use alone accounting for 22.8% of energy use in 2008, with heating, lighting, and appliances accounting for 12.6% of the total, according to Statistics Canada. The energy consumption by these sectors have been rising over time, growing 11% between 2000 and 2008. As energy costs rise and the carbon footprint of energy sources becomes a growing concern, there is an imperative need to intelligently control the use of energy in homes and buildings, eliminating waste while minimally affecting user comfort. Meeting these goals requires careful control over energy consumption by appliances, heating and cooling systems, and lighting (the three main uses of energy), taking user preferences into account. The recent rapid decrease in the cost of solar panels raises the further possibility of simultaneously reducing carbon footprint, transmission and distribution losses, and operational cost by integrating these elements into homes and buildings. However, these generation resources are time-varying, requiring the careful sizing, integration, and control of associated (expensive) electricity storage. From the perspective of computer systems research, managing energy consumption requires the design and implementation of an underlying control framework that is composed from wireless sensors and actuators, coupled with computation. Our overall goal, therefore, is to exploit low-cost pervasive computing and ubiquitous wireless communication for the management and control of energy use in buildings and homes, drawing on our past decades of experience in the design, implementation, operation, and management of computer networks such as the Internet.