Home energy management system over low-power narrowband PLC

Abstract

The need for efficient use of energy has inspired intelligent load control strategies in the home area network (HAN) using the power of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). This paper investigates the use of low-power Narrowband Power Line Communication (NPLC) to support home energy management system (HEMS). Compared with low power wireless systems, it will be shown that using low-power Narrowband PLC (NPLC), packet success rate can be improved by approximately 85.32%, 208% and 85.32% in dense, sparse and large networks respectively. These results imply that low power NPLC is a feasible alternative for HEMS where low power wireless network is limited or inadequate.