P-3-13

Home Appliance Energy Monitoring and Controlling Based on

Power Line Communication
Chia-Hung Lien*, Ying-Wen Bai**, Hsien-Chung Chen** and Chi-Huang Hung**
*Department of Computer science and Information Engineering, Lee-Ming Institute of Technology, 243, R.O.C.
**Department of Electronic Engineering, Fu Jen Catholic University, Taipei, Taiwan, 242, R.O.C

Abstract-- In this paper an embedded remote monitoring and

controlling power socket (RMCPS) has been developed with high
suitability for automatic and power management of home electric
appliances. It requires no new layout and has the advantage of
low cost, low electricity consumption, small volume and
convenient installation to replace the PC with a Web server
construction. The RMCPS consists of three modules: the
Essential Module, the Power Line Communication (PLC) Module
and the Detection Module. This allows the user a remote Internet
connection to an embedded power socket to both monitor and
control home electric appliances.

I. INTRODUCTION
With the construction of network techniques, there have
been several standard family wire network developed and Fig. 1 The RMCPS power supply socket system
suggested [1]. To implement the management of the power
supply sockets of home electric appliances, those home The RMCPS also includes a power measuring circuit to
electric appliances that function with network monitoring and measure the power consumption of each electric home
controlling capabilities don’t require any network re-layout appliance. The socket voltage is connected to the MCU
[2]. Power Line Communication (PLC) carries out high speed through a filter. The socket current then is converted from a
data transmission through power lines. A simple wireless current to a voltage. The electrical power comes from
network can be constructed with advantage of stable data multiplying the two voltage signals with the current signal,
transmission, and this type of network is gradually receiving and the results are accumulated in the register.
growing attention [3].
A no-new-wire embedded system to monitor/control power
for home appliances remotely has been developed in this
paper for home power management. By using PLC
technologies, home appliances can be controlled and
monitored by utilizing AC wire lines. Fig. 1 shows an
overview of the embedded system which consists of three
parts: the remote monitoring and controlling power socket, the
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) and the remote
control. By combining the PLC and Ethernet technologies, the
RMCPS can be connected to the Internet by the ADSL
without any new additional wire lines. Thus the user can
manage electric home appliances and remotely monitor their
power consumption status by means of the remote Web
browser.

II. DESIGN OF RMCPS Fig. 2 RMCPS circuit

The circuit diagram of the RMCPS is shown in Fig. 2; it

includes the multiple AC power sockets, and a simple plug-in
microcontroller which both performs the power on/off of the
sockets and processes the measured data.
III. SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE
For the overall software architecture of the RMCPS, please
refer to Fig. 3. For the software modules based on a Thin OS
core, application programs can be divided into nine parts.
Fig. 4 shows the control flow chart of the RMCPS. After
booting, the overall system has to be initiated, and then the

978-1-4244-2559-4/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE

Home Page to client application program for remote
monitoring and controlling is loaded. By using the spare time
available for the embedded Web server, the power
consumption, Vrms and Irms of power supply sockets can be
read and temporarily saved in memories to wait for Web-page
retrieval. After the network packets have been processed by
the embedded Web server, if there is a remote user demand,
the corresponding process will be connected to CGI
applications such as the demands for the Web-page to display
a new power socket status, the overall control of the specific
on/off operation on power sockets and the firmware (FW)
updates. This process convenient for the user to remotely
monitor and control the power sockets.
Fig. 5 Home page of the RMCPSs

Table I shows the comparison of our design with other

home power management designs. The result of our
experiment demonstrates that as our design has more
integrated functions it is superior to others.

Table I
Comparison of the home power management designs
Method 1 [1] Method 2 [2] Method 3 [3] Our design
Communication RF PLC Ethernet PLC
Fig. 3 The software structure of remote monitoring and controlling Home server X PC PC Embedded
System power X 156 Watts 156 Watts 5 Watts
consumption
Setup Complicated Complicated Easy Easy
Scale out Limited Limited Limited Unlimited
Monitoring each X X X Yes
socket
Monitoring total X Yes X Yes
power
Detecting X X X Yes
temperature/
light
Remote control Local Specific Specific Web browser
software control software software
Detecting X About 5 About 5 About 0.1
minimum power Watts Watts Watt

REFERENCE
Fig. 4 The software process illustration for remote monitoring and controlling
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IV. IMPLEMENTATION RESULTS
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As shown in Fig. 5, by utilizing any Web browser, the user, anisotropy," in Magnetism, vol. III, G. T. Rado and H. Suhl, Eds. New
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