A decision support system based on wireless power metering for energy saving in smart buildings

Energy saving in smart buildings is addressed through an innovative approach based on game theory (GT). Starting from the measurement of the users’ consumptions performed with wireless smart meters interconnected to the appliances, the collected data are processed by a control unit to evaluate the optimal load profiles and to suggest to the users the most convenient schedule of appliances. This is yielded by mathematically solving a multiplayer game throughout GT principles. The objective is that of reaching the Nash equilibrium in which all the players are not interested in changing their situation/status (i.e., the appliance scheduling) as every deviation would be suboptimal. Results from numerical simulations are reported to assess the performance of the proposed GT-based method, while preliminary experimental tests are performed to show the potentialities of the system in real conditions. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:2750–2752, 2015