Towards a Smart Home Framework

Moody AlamAgents, Interaction & Complexity (AIC) Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science,

University of Southampton

What is a smart home?

The Future Home, The Jetsons, 1962

Home automation

Sensors

Connected devices

Visions from the past The Present Future Vision!

Future Homes, 1969[A robot serving beer!]

The Smart Home, The Jetsons, 1962

Future Homes, 1969[A robot serving beer!]

Green + Wired

What is a smart home?

• No agreed definition!

• The IBM’s vision:1. Instrumented2. Interconnected3. Intelligent

Why is the Smart Home important?

5.38 Million Smart Homes by 2015 [Berg Insight]

Renewable energy electricity gas water, etc.

home comfort lights home automation

Zero Carbon Homes

Energy managementhome care chronicle diseases presence home hospitalization

Smart home is an active research area

• Academia • All top 10 Engi. & Tech Universities [Times higher Education].• Caltech, MIT, Princeton, Cali-Berkeley, Southampton*

• Industry• Governments – US, UK, Aus, Canada, China, EU, • Hundreds of companies- Microsoft, IBM, British Gas..

• Numerous sub-domains: home automation, energy conservation, elderly living.

• We are interested in those sub-domains which require developing a software model of smart home.

Typical workflow in such domains

Form a Hypothesis

Build a Model

Simulate /Optimise

Analyse Results

Modify/ Conclude

Hypothesis

Typical workflow in such domainsForm a

Hypothesis

Build a Model

Simulate /Optimise

Analyse Results

Modify/ Conclude

Hypothesis

Battery reduces

cost

Matlab / Java code

Minimise cost given

battery

Compare costs

True / False

Typical workflow in such domainsForm a

Hypothesis

Build a Model

Simulate /Optimise

Analyse Results

Modify/ Conclude

Hypothesis

Battery reduces

cost

Matlab / Java code

Minimise cost given

battery

Compare costs

True / False

What is the problem?Problem:These three phases (modelling, simulation and analysis) take up the most time.

Solution: We propose our Smart Home Framework to speed up these phases.

We are not the only smart people to have realised this problem! • Industry has the proprietary software toolkits.

– Cost and Licenses! – Platform-dependency! – Limited interoperability between platforms. – Focused on the company’s business.

• Academia has very few open-source toolkits:– Focused on narrow research issues– Models are not general and thus not extendable in other related domain

Why is SH Framework a good idea?

• Open-source and free of cost!

• SHF has three core components each focused on a single phase:– Model Classes Model building phase– Optimiser Optimisation / Simulation phase– Visualiser Analyse Results

Smart Home Framework

Building a Model

Optimisation

Analysis

Smart Home Framework

Building a Model

Optimisation

Analysis

SHF: Model Classes: Overview

• We take a bottom-up modelling approach:– Smart Home is made of different components (e.g. appliances and

storage).– We provide general models for these components. – These components can be integrated to create a smart home.

• This general model of a smart home:– Has an understanding of its components and how are they related– Can be extended to specific models

• These smart homes can be connected together to form a smart community.

Modelling a smart home

• A collection of:– Appliances – Generators– Storage – Electric Vehicle

• Relationships:– Between all above– Grid (Tariff) – Other Smart homes

Appliances

EVs Storage

Generation

Grid

Grid

• SH Framework contains – Interfaces – Abstract classes– And Implementation of abstract classes

• To model– Generation– Storage– Appliances– Appliances’ Use

Modelling a smart home

SHF: Modelling Generation & Storage

• Modelling Generation Sources– Microgeneration (e.g. Solar Panels / Wind Turbine)– Grid

• Modelling Storage Facilities– Electric Batteries– EV Batteries

SHF: Appliances and their usage

• Support to model appliances (i.e. Loads):– SHF already have implementation of common home devices

(e.g. TV, Oven)– Abstract classes to include new appliances

• Modelling appliances’ usage (i.e. Load Events):– Deferrable and Non-Deferrable– Interruptible and Non-Interruptable – Critical – Baseload– Combination of above (e.g. a deferrable interruptible critical

load event)

SHF: Modelling implicit understanding of devices and their relationships

• Consumption + Battery Charging = Generation• Battery has a limited number of charging

cycles.• EV battery is available only certain times a day.

Modelling is easy: Code Snippets

• Adding renewable generation and/or grid is easy:– agent.addEnergySource(new SolarPanel(1.5kW));– agent.addEnergySource(new WindTurbine(2kW));– agent.addEnergySource(new Grid(tariff));

• Creating appliances and Load Events:– TV tv = new TV(0.3kW) – agent.addEvent(new onDeferrableLoadEvent(tv,start,end);

• Adding storage– agent.addStorage(new Battery( 2kWh, 0.5kW, 10%loss));

Smart Home Framework

Building a Model

Optimisation

Analysis

SHF: Optimisation in a smart home

• Optimisation depends on the structure or formation of your smart home model:– Generally speaking, you may be solving a convex or

non-convex problem to answer your research question.

– Your choice of optimiser will depend on the structure of your problem.

• SHF architecture allows you to plug-in any optimiser of your choice!

SHF comes with a default optimiser• IBM’s CPLEX Optimiser is available as the default plug-in

optimiser:– Free of cost to academia.– Supports LP, MIP and Convex optimisation– Catch: License needed for commercial use.

• So if your optimisation problem falls under LP, IP, MIP or certain convex subclasses, then you can use the default optimiser!

• This optimiser is sufficient for the common optimisation problems. For advanced and complex optimisation problems (e.g. non-convex) you can just plug-in a general solver of your choice.

SHF and IBM CPLEX

• An optimisation problem can be expressed as a:– Model (variables, and constraints.)– Objective function

• SHF already have a smart home CPLEX model (Java code). • Commonly used objective functions are already

implemented, e.g.– Maximise Preference, Minimise Cost/Carbon

• If your objective function is not already implemented, you can just write a new objective function and use the existing CPLEX home model!

Smart Home Framework

Building a Model

Optimisation

Analysis

SHF: Analysing results• SHF comes with a visualiser. • Code is there to visualise common devices /

events in a smart home.– Plots for generation, consumption, battery usage

• Visualiser is extendible, easy to include new plots etc.

• Results available in XML, CSV formats

Smart Home Demo: Modelling, Optimisation and Analysis

Beyond a single smart home: Smart communities

• The framework has all the building blocks to create a community of connected homes.

• A small community be readily modelled to test different communal aspects:– Energy Exchange – Electric vehicle charging– Battery Usage minimisation– Coalition formation for group buying

Smart Community Demo: Reducing the battery usage through energy exchange

Questions??

Thank you!