Optimal Water Heater Control in Smart Home Environments

TL;DR

This paper presents a dynamic programming-based control method for water heaters in smart homes to maximize photovoltaic energy use, reduce costs, and maintain comfort, with promising simulation results.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dynamic programming approach tailored for water heater control to improve energy efficiency in smart homes.

Findings

Reduces overall energy costs in simulations.

Enhances photovoltaic energy utilization.

Maintains resident comfort effectively.

Abstract

In this work, we develop an optimal water heater control method for a smart home environment. It is important to notice that unlike battery storage systems, energy flow in a water heater control system is not reversible. In order to increase the eigen consumption of photovoltaic energy, i.e. direct consumption of generated energy in the house, we propose to employ a dynamic programming approach to optimize heating schedules using forecasted consumption and weather data. Simulation results demonstrate the capability of our proposed system in reducing the overall energy cost while maintaining residents' comfort.