Energy Router with Load Switching Functionality

Abstract As energy consumption in residential areas is rising, rooftop PV and small wind turbines have been widely deployed in residential areas to save energy cost. How to achieve efficient use of distributed energy has become the current focus. This paper proposes a home energy management system based on an Energy Router. The Energy Router with plug-and-play and load switching functionality can make maximum use of renewable energy. With the novel design of switch array within the energy router, operation of the home appliances can be scheduled to minimize the total cost of energy consumption. Based on the above system design, a hardware experiment platform was built. The experimental results show that the Energy Router enables seamless switching of the loads between different energy sources, according to their priorities and their requirements on power quality. The switching of the loads between different power sources make it possible to take full use of the renewable energy within the HEMS, and the process of switching is seamless so that the operation of the loads will not be affected.