The Energy Box: Locally Automated Optimal Control of Residential Electricity Usage

The Energy Box is proposed as a 24/7 background processor operating on a local computer or in a remote location, silently managing one's home or small business electrical energy usage hour-by-hour and even minute-by-minute. It operates best in an environment of demand-sensitive real-time pricing, now made feasible via `smart grid' technology. We assume that, in time, virtually every electrical device in a home or small business will be controllable from the Energy Box. There are multiple motivations for an Energy Box: (1) By delaying or pushing forward various uses of electricity (e.g., space conditioning), widespread use of the Energy Box could `shave the peaks and fill in the valleys of demand,' thereby reducing the need for capacity expansion in electrical power generation and distribution; (2) The system should result in reduced electrical energy costs to the consumer; (3) The system supports local generation, storage and sale of electricity back to the grid; (4) The system supports graceful reductions in power consumption by allowing voluntary partial load shedding as requested by the electric utility during times of extreme high demand; (5) Requiring numerous minute-by-minute decisions over the course of a day, the system alleviates the home owner or small business manager from making such decisions, each only involving pennies but in the aggregate involving significant dollars. The primary integrating method of optimization and control is stochastic dynamic programming. [ Service Science , ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]