Increasing use of energy efficient home appliances contributes to the reduction of energy usage by residential consumers. The combination of home appliances and energy management systems has been proposed as an energy efficient solution for smart homes. However, the need of reactive power not only reduces overall energy efficiency due to losses incurred in transmission and distribution power lines, but also poor regulation of reactive power degrades the lifespan of consumer appliances; both quantifiable in billions of dollars in losses per year. In this project, the available reactive power capacities in various home appliances will be evaluated. The reactive power demand will be met by the reactive power capacity of these appliances. Typically, home appliances such as laundry machines and air conditioners have a front-end power factor correction (PFC) converter to satisfy power factor conditions for Energy Star certification. These PFC circuits are usually low-cost unidirectional boost converters. Even though the power capacity in this PFC converter is small, multiple home appliances can cooperate to meet the reactive power demand in distribution level power networks. A wireless home power management system will also be developed to 1) manage the reactive power compensation provided by each appliance, and 2) cooperate with smart home energy management networks or advanced metering interface systems for peak demand response purposes. As a result, the power losses due to the transmission lines and distribution lines, and voltage fluctuations due to variations in reactive power will be significantly reduced. The success of the proposed framework will result in significant enhancement of power quality in residential applications at little to no extra cost to the consumer. Furthermore, the life-cycle of the home appliances will be improved; and lastly, CO2 emissions will be reduced.
The objective of this research is to construct, emulate, and investigate the effectiveness of a wireless power quality management system that utilizes available power capacities from home appliances, small solar power generators, and electric vehicles which can all be found in residential and smart home applications. The proposed method coordinates active and reactive power support and harmonic control capabilities of both unidirectional converters and bidirectional converters for power quality mitigation. A low-power real-time wireless network will be employed as the communication infrastructure to exchange power quality information between a power quality manager and the converters. Hybrid control for active power, reactive power, and harmonic distortion compensations in these aggregated converters will be the key enabler for this technology. This project will conduct a technology survey, wireless network and supervisory controller design, an experimental verification through proof-of-concept design, and an implementation and feasibility test of reactive power support from home appliances. The proposed research is transformative because it provides a fundamental and highly scalable framework for monitoring, mitigating, and enhancing power quality in residential applications ranging from a single building power system to community-wide and city-wide power systems especially in microgrids employing renewable energy sources, power quality monitoring systems, and smart appliances.
