IEEE NPSS (Toronto), UOIT, Oshawa, ON, 2-3 June, 2011
International Workshop on Real Time Measurement, Instrumentation & Control [RTMIC]A Survey on Home Energy Management and Monitoring
DevicesA. Kamatham, and W. G. Morsi
University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, ON, Canada
Abstract
Electric power grid is facing various challenges due to its aging infrastructure while it is stillrequired to meet the growing demand and maintain high power quality. In order to address theseconcerns, consumers can manage their energy consumption using energy management systems(EMS). These EMS control the energy consumed while electric utilities can provide incentives
through demand side energy management programs. The important aspect of this system would
be to monitor the energy consumption of individual appliance and transmit this information to aremote metering system for easy access between utility and consumer. This constitutes
implementing appropriate load disaggregation techniques to non-intrusively monitor the electricenergy consumption while ensuring that the whole system is at an affordable price. This paper
aims to review the energy monitoring and management products currently available in themarket for residential sector. Within these products, various technologies featured are reviewed
and a comparative study among these technologies is presented.
Keywords: Home energy management, Energy monitoring, Wireless sensor, Energy saving
products, Smart meter and Remote control.

1 Nomenclature
EM
HEMS
HEM
HEC
HEG
NIALM
RECAP
CT
ANN
AC
IR
AMI
AMR
ERT
MTU
SMPS

Energy Management
Home Energy Management System
Home Energy Management
Home Energy Controller
Home Energy Gateway
Non Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring
Recognition of Electrical Appliance and Profiling in Real- Time
Current Transformer/ Transducer
Artificial Neural Network
Alternating Current
Infrared Ray
Advanced Metering Infrastructure
Advanced Meter Reading
Encoder Receiver Transmitter
Measuring Transmitting Unit
Switching Mode Power Supply

2 Introduction
Power demand has been steadily growing over the last few decades because of the natural
expansion in the residential and industrial sectors. Moreover, it is expected to steeply increase in
the near future with the integration of Electric Vehicles (EVs). This growing demand alerts
utilities, system operators and consumers regarding possible impacts on the electricity grid interms of protection, control, efficiency and power quality issues if proper actions are not taken

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International Workshop on Real Time Measurement, Instrumentation & Control [RTMIC]

to reduce the energy consumption and to ensure efficient monitoring. In addition, the concerns
over climate change due to pollutant energy sources have led to consensus to limit or eveneliminate fossil-fuel based generation sources from the energy portfolios of many North
American jurisdictions. Moreover, most of the power system assets suffer from aging as manyof them are in service for more than 50 years ago, which may not qualify them to accommodate
the expected growing demand of 20% according to North American Electric Reliability Council(NERC), [1], since they are close to be retiring hence their performance will be reduced. As aresult, transmission lines congestion, overall power system performance degradation, poor
reliability and poor power quality will be the consequences unless necessary steps are taken tomonitor the energy usage and to reduce the energy consumption especially during the time ofpeak demand.
A first insight into the energy management process requires efficient monitoring of electric
quantities such as voltage and current in real-time, then processing these data using signal
processing techniques to provide the consumers with useful information regarding their energy
consumption and energy bills which will help them changing their energy consumption patternaccording to for example the time of use (TOU) in which customer is charged at high energy
rates during peak time demand and lower rates during off peak time demand [2].
Recent developments in energy saving devices and integration of smart meter technologies haveshown promising results in terms of reducing the energy consumption to up to 20% in theresidential sector [3]. Despite this fact, the cost of energy monitoring systems along with energy
saving devices still hamper full implementation of this technology in every home in all
jurisdictions, keeping in mind that old homes represent the largest consumers of energy in theresidential sector. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the energy saving products
available in the market and presents the technologies used in developing these devices.
Moreover, the paper introduces a cost-effective comparative study of these energy saving
devices while it highlights the technical aspects of each product regarding the monitoring andthe management of the electric energy consumption in the residential sector.

3 Overview of Energy Management Products
Energy management and monitoring products categorized into three groups: Portable plug-inenergy monitor, Full house energy monitor, and Full house energy management with individual
device control. The following subsections outline the technical aspects upon which there groups
are based on.

3.1

Portable Plug-in Energy Monitoring Products:“Belkin conserve insight” [4] shown in Fig.1 is a very simple energy monitoring device that canmeasure the power usage of any electronic device connected to a 3-pin Alternating Current(AC) outlet. Through this portable device consumers can monitor: power usage of any single
appliance in watts, cost during the operation in dollars per KWh and also, the amount of carbon
dioxide produced. It measures the power usage directly from the AC line in both instantaneousand average modes. During the instantaneous mode it takes current and voltage measurementsfrom AC outlet at certain time and calculate the instantaneous power consumption. While inaverage mode, it calculates the average of voltage and current samples over a time period
determined by the instant the device was plugged in till the end of the measurement period.
“P3 International” [5] also introduced “Kill-a-Watt” energy monitoring products (Figs.2-4) fromlarge load monitoring power strips, to single appliance monitoring power meters, and wirelessP232-2

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International Workshop on Real Time Measurement, Instrumentation & Control [RTMIC]

sensors & display panel. “Kill-a-watt PS-10” power strip monitors the cumulative power usageof devices connected such as PC, home theater and TV. “Kill-a-Watt EZ”, GT and “Save-aWatt” models connect directly to the appliance and its power usage is displayed on the power
meter. “Kill-a-Watt P4200” has single display panel that monitors power usage up to eighttraceable wireless sensor activated appliances [30]. All “Kill-a-Watt” models measures power
consumption using the RMS voltage and current samples from the 3-pin AC wall outlet.
Wireless sensor connected appliances transmit the power usage information to display panel
using the 433 MHz radio frequency channel. “Watts Up? .Net” [6] shown in Fig. 5 works insimilar way to “Belkin insight” and “Kill-a-Watt EZ”, “GT” & “Save-a-Watt” models but,unlike these plug-in products “Watt Up? .Net” has the capability to control and access powerusage data of the appliance through any internet enabled and elink monitoring software installed
Portable Computer (PC).

Fig. 1 Conserve Insight

Fig. 2 PS-10

Fig. 3 Kill A Watt EZ

Fig. 4 Kill A Watt WirelessP232-3Fig. 5 Watts Up? .Net

IEEE NPSS (Toronto), UOIT, Oshawa, ON, 2-3 June, 2011
International Workshop on Real Time Measurement, Instrumentation & Control [RTMIC]

3.2

Full House Energy Management Products:“Blueline” Innovation‟s “PowerCost” Monitor [7], “Black & Decker” Power Monitor [9], and“Watt-vision‟s” Energy Sensor [8] Energy Management (EM) devices shown in Figs. 6-8 use apassively connected IR pulse sensor technology to read the power consumption data from thesmart meter and relay information on close loop signal to display panel using the 433 MHz
frequency band. Most analog and digital meters are compatible with the IR sensor technologythat has either visible „disc‟ or optical port that generates watt pulse on the meter [24]. The
sensor has 2 LEDs which either sends out IR pulse or detects an IR pulse. For analog meters,
sensor needs to align with spinning disk and black mark inside the meter where it measures thetotal power consumption. While, for digital meters IR sensor aligns with optical port on themeter and measures power usage through the red light flashing once per revolution of disk.
Since, the sensor depends on the type of electricity meter installed in the house the sampling andtransmission time varies depending on the meter.

Fig. 6 PowerCost Monitor

Fig. 7 Power Monitor

Fig. 8 Wattvision“PowerCost” Monitor and “Wattvision” Energy sensor also have WiFi connectivity feature
which allows the home users to access the energy usage information from anywhere on theinternet enabled PC.
“Efergy e2” [10]/ “Cent-a-Meter” [11]/ “Owl” [12]/ “Current Cost Envi” [13] energy
management products (Figs. 9-12) employ a single phase Current Transformer (CT) clamp or
current sensing technology to detect and monitor the change in magnetic field around the smart
meter power feed cable, remote transmitter for wireless communication and energy monitor
display panel. The CT measures the current being used in amperes and uses nominal system
voltage to calculate the cumulative power consumption [22]. The remote transmitter unit thentransmits this information to an energy monitor display panel on a 433 MHz frequency channel.

Fig. 9 Efergy e2

Fig. 10 Cent A Meter

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Fig. 11 Owl
3.3

Fig. 12 Current Cost Envi

Full House Energy Management with Individual Device Control:“TED 5000 series” [14]/ “eMonitor” [15]/ “Eyedro” [16] (Figs. 13-15) has single electricity
sensor i.e. CT similar to “Efergy e2”/ “Cent-a-Meter”/ “Owl”/ “Current Cost Envi” products but
provides additional capability of RECAP. Current Transformer (CT) sensor captures therequired parameters for each appliance such as, signature ID, real power, power factor, RMS
voltage & current, sampling rate and machine state (ON/OFF), and transmits these data to a
database location such as, local PC or remote server through Ethernet gateway, Wi-Fi or Powerline for consumer action. These power components and their profiling to individual appliancehelp differentiate a unique appliance signature. Once these parameters are transmitted todatabase it is trained using a biological training model like, ANN built within the provided
software for recognition of appliances. When the individual appliance is trained with enoughdata, load profile for that particular appliance is created to monitor and control with greater
accuracy and performance [27].

Fig. 13 The Energy Detective (TED)

Fig. 14 eMonitor

Intel low-power Z5xx series atom processor based HEMS [17] shown in (Fig. 16) is the latest
Intel's concepts designed to monitor, control and manage power usage information with smart
appliances, smart plugs, smart meters and wireless sensor activated devices throughout thehouse. It is the most complete energy management product which informs the home users with
relevant and detail information regarding power consumption of full house to individual
appliance and also, suggest power saving solutions.

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Fig. 15 Eyedro

Intel HEM monitors the power consumption of full house and individual appliances using a
low cost single point wireless sensor shown in (Fig. 17) which can be plugged-in to any
electrical outlet in the house. Single point energy sensing is related to NIALM which is basedon analyzing changes in voltage measurements [23]. These voltage measurements are taken as
load identification and appliance actions such as, device turning ON/OFF. Load identification
involves NIALM approach for disaggregated energy sensing by using high frequency voltage
noise FFT of the transient signals when devices are turned ON/OFF [29]. These continuous
voltage noise signatures provides unique voltage recognition pattern which can be used todifferentiate energy usage among the installed appliances.

Fig. 166 Intel Dashboard

Fig. 17 Cisco HEC“Cisco HEC (Fig.18) [18], FreeScale HEG” (Fig.19) [19], and Control4 EMS (Fig. 20) [20]collects power consumption data from various sources such as, appliances, solar panel, andsmart meters, and establishes a 2-way communication between utility and consumer in order tomonitor, control and manage power consumption. Each of these sources has a Zigbee enabled
wireless sensor which allows the HEMS to communicate with individual appliances, smart
meters, thermostat control, and so on [30]. Within the HEMS, HEM is connected to the gateway
through Wi-Fi, Ethernet or PLM where the data is sent over the internet for remote data accessand control. Smart electricity meters with AMI, AMR or ERT send power usage information toutilities through power line communication. Through this 2-way communication utilities andP232-6

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International Workshop on Real Time Measurement, Instrumentation & Control [RTMIC]

consumers can have complete control over the energy management of the whole house to
individual appliances [28].

Fig. 18 FreeScale HEG

3.4

Fig. 19 Control4 EMS

Products Comparative Study:
Table I plug-in energy monitoring devices

PRODUCT NAMEPRODUCT
CHARACTERISTICS

POWER MONITORINGTECHNOLOGYBELKIN CONSERVE INSIGHT
F7C005Q / P4460 P3
INTERNATIONAL KILL A
WATTDIRECT SENSING THROUGH
AC LINE IN BOTH
INSTANTANEOUS AND
AVERAGE (RMS) MODE

P3 INTERNATIONAL
P4200 KILL A WATTWIRELESSDIRECT SENSING
THROUGH AC LINE FOR
INSTANTANEOUS
POWER, CURRENT,ACTIVE POWER

WATTS UP?

ACTIVE POWER,
RMS VOLTAGE AND
CURRENTMEASUREMENTS
THROUGH AC LINEINDIVIDUAL WIRELESSACTIVATED SENSORAPPLIANCE (TRACK UP
TO 8 APPLIANCES) /LARGE LOADCOMPONENTBREAKDOWNSINGLE APPLIANCE

SOFTWARE
COMPATIBILITY

-

-

-

WIRELESS SENSOR TODISPLAY PANEL: ZIGBEE(IEEE 802.15.4)

NETWORKCOMMUNICATIONSINGLE APPLIANCE

GOOGLE POWER
METER

ACCESS DATAWIRELESSLY OR
REMOTELY:

THINKECO MODLET/FREELUX/ WATTS
CLEVER/ BITS
LIMITED/ KILL A
WATT PS-10

DIRECT SENSING
THROUGH AC LINELARGE LOAD (TOTAL
POWER USAGE OFCONNECTEDAPPLIANCES)-

ZIGBEE/WIFI/WIRELESSETHERNETINTERFACEUPDATE TIME

1 SEC

REAL TIME

15 MIN-

PRICE$30-60$100$219$15-50P232-7

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International Workshop on Real Time Measurement, Instrumentation & Control [RTMIC]

Table II Full house Energy Monitoring devices
PRODUCT NAMEPRODUCT
CHARACTERISTICS

POWER MONITORINGTECHNOLOGYCOMPONENTBREAKDOWNINDIVIDUAL LOAD
IDENTIFICATIONPOWER COST MONITOR
PCM28000 + WIFI GATEWAY/
EM100 BLACK AND DECKER/
WATTIVISIONEFERGY E2/ CENTAMETER/ OWL/ CURRENT COSTINFRARED RAY PULSE SENSOR/DIGITAL IR SENSOR/ ANALOG

CT CLAMPS/ CURRENT SENSORSSENSOR

FULL HOUSE ENERGYMONITOR

FULL HOUSE ENERGY MONITOR WITH CIRCUIT BY CIRCUIT CATEGORIZED LOAD-

ADDING ADDITIONAL CT/ TRANSDUCERS FOR EACH CIRCUIT WIREINSTALLATIONSENSOR CLAMPED TO
ELECTRICITY METER

CLAMPS ON TO ELECTRIC METER FEED CABLE

SOFTWARE
COMPATIBILITY

HOHM

ELINK/BUILT-IN

SENSOR TO DISPLAYCOMMUNICATION:433.92 MHZ
WIRELESS TRANSMITTERSENSOR TO DISPLAY COMMUNICATION:433.52 MHZ WIRELESS TRANSMITTERMETHOD

NETWORKCOMMUNICATIONREMOTE DATA ACCESS: WIFIUPDATE TIME

30 SEC

6-18 SEC

PRICE$100-270$145- 250

Table III Full house energy monitoring devices with break down to individual loads
PRODUCT NAMEPRODUCT
CHARACTERISTICS

POWER MONITORINGTECHNOLOGYTED 5000 SERIES /EMONITOR/ EYEDROINTEL HEM DASHBOARD

MTU WITH A SET OF CT‟S

AC LINE SINGLE POINT WIRELESS(ZIGBEE ENABLED) SENSING USINGNIALMFULL HOUSE ENERGYCOMPONENT BREAKDOWNMONITOR WITH CIRCUIT BY
CIRCUIT CATEGORIZEDLOAD

CISCO HEC/ FREESCALE HEG/CONTROL4 EMS-100
ZIGBEE ENABLED, SMART PLUGS,
SMART METER WITH ADVANCEDMETERING INFRASTRUCTURE (AMI)+ERT READINGFULL HOUSE EM WITH BREAKDOWNTOINDIVIDUAL DEVICES USING SMPS OR

FULL HOUSE EM AND CONTROLWITH BREAKDOWN TO INDIVIDUALSYSTEMS AND APPLIANCESOTHER ELECTRONIC LOAD CONTROLSINDIVIDUAL LOAD
IDENTIFICATION METHODRECAP USING ELECTRICALSENSOR (CT)

VOLTAGE RECOGNITION PATTERNUSING CONTINUOUS VOLTAGE NOISE

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SIGNATURE

INSTALLATIONINSTALLS ON CIRCUITBREAK BOX WITH NETWORK

PLUG-IN ANYWHERE IN THE HOME 3-

SOFTWARE SUPPORTGOOGLE POWER METERBUILT IN ENERGY MANAGERPIN ELECTRICAL OUTLET

DEVICE TO DEVICE COMMUNICATION:ZIGBEE (IEEE 802.15.4)
NETWORKCOMMUNICATIONETHERNET GATEWAY +WIRELESSUPDATE TIME

1 SECOND

PRICE$200-1300

SMART METERS/ AMI/ AMR

HOHM
COMMUNICATING WITH CLOUDBASED DEVICE MANAGEMENTSYSTEM: WIFI/ETHERNETWIRELESS HEM CONTROL:WIFI (IEEE 802.11 B/G/N)

COMMUNICATION WITH SMART
METERS & OTHER INDIVIDUAL
DEVICES: ZIGBEEREAL TIMEREAL TIMECHECK WITH LOCAL UTILITY$300- 1000

4 Conclusions
In this paper, a review of the currently available energy monitoring and saving devices in themarket is presented with comprehensive overview of various technologies implemented in thethree categories of energy monitoring and management products identified in this paper namely;
portable plug-in energy monitoring, Full house EM, and Full house EM with breakdown toindividual appliances.
The products reviewed has shown that single appliance load monitoring and whole houseenergy management power usage data may not suffice to significantly managing the energy
consumption in a holistic perspective since there is not much scope for consumers to take any
enough action over energy management, nevertheless electric utilities. Therefore, it is necessary
to find stable individual load identification techniques that will allow both the utilities andconsumers to better manage and control the way energy is being consumed and utilized using aholistic approach.
There have been many methods proposed by the authors till now to identify individual
appliance load monitoring but, each method comes with its own problems of classifying andsensing individual loads such as, transient power signature for similar load identification.
Recently, artificial neural networks with combination of other load identification have caught
much of interest with improved accuracy and load detection.
In implementing these techniques it is also important to foresee other factors such as, cost ofwhole system setup, hardware requirements, ease of implementation and as such. While, theprice of the product increases with its ability to manage, monitor and control energy in thehouse, most of these products can be installed by any regular consumer but few may need anelectrician to setup the system. For example, “TED 5000 series”/ “eMonitor”/ “Eyedro” shownin (Figs. 13-15) require an experienced electrician to open the main panel of the circuit board tocorrectly install the CT clamps for each circuit.

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Based on this proposed study of these products HEMS are able to generate energy savings forboth utility and consumer by engaging them to make energy saving decisions through various
communication protocols such as, ZigBee, Power Line Communication (PLC) etc. For instance,
through PLC utility can alert consumer to reduce/increase the temperature of the thermostat to
reduce power consumption during peak time. This will ensure energy losses are reduced for
utility companies and at the same time reduce energy bills for the customer.

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Authors
Avinash Kamatham was born in Hyderabad, India in 1988. Hereceived the B.Sc. (Eng) from University of Ontario Institute Of
Technology (UOIT), Oshawa, Canada in 2011. His major works
during the tenure include, CAD Design of RF/Microwave Circuits,
Microcontroller Based Directional Impedance Protection Relay
Design, Temperature controlled Thermostat design, DC Chopper
Circuit Design, Series to Parallel Hybrid Vehicle Modelling, andAmplifier Design. Apart from educational experience, he has worked
as summer student in Cobalt Pharmaceuticals for the position of
Office Administrator. Currently, he has joined with Professor Walid
G. Morsi to work as a lab assistant in UOIT. He is also active memberof IEEE- Power and Engineering Society and OSPE (Ontario Societyof professional Engineers).

Walid G. Morsi (S‟07 – M‟09) was born in Ismailia, Egypt in 1975.
He received the B.Sc. (Eng.) and M.Sc. degrees from Suez Canal
University, Port-Said, Egypt, in 1998 and 2002, respectively. In 2009,
he received the Ph.D. degree from Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS,
Canada, where he was a Killam memorial pre-doctoral scholar then heworked as Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical andComputer Engineering at University of New Brunswick, Fredericton,
NB, Canada. Currently he is working as Assistant Professor in the
Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of
Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Oshawa, ON, Canada. His
research interests include power quality, renewable energy sources,
smart grid, smart meters, demand side management (DSM), vehicle togrid (V2G), signal processing and artificial intelligence applicationsin power systems. Dr. Morsi is a registered professional engineer of
Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO) andEngineers Nova Scotia (ENS).

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