Ideas abound for controlling the amount of electricity we use in our homes. But managing the temperature indoors has repeatedly proved as a much tougher a nut to crack. A ‘smart home’ could thus be the answer for future living. Researches on smart homes in the U.S. and U.K. have inevitably always focused on controlling electricity usage than the indoor temperatures. This is curious, given that two thirds of domestic energy in U.K goes on heating homes during the freezing temperatures. The reason for this apparent oversight is that compared to creating smart electricity meters and computer-controlled devices, ‘smart heating’ is a much harder problem to solve. It requires striking a delicate balance between maximising people’s comfort and minimising costs by making best use of dynamic electricity pricing.
To combat this, an already present innovation called the ‘Learning Thermostat’ created by Nest in Palo Alto, California, advices to turn the heat down at the same time every day and it “learns” to do it for you. While those who forget to do so can simply do it through a setting via their smartphones. Though there are major drawbacks too. The device never really “learns” about the house itself: how long it takes to heat in the morning or how swiftly it cools at night.
This is when Alex Rogers and his team at the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, installed sensors all over his home to measure everything, right down to the minute-by-minute firing of the boiler and how much gas was being consumed because of it. This generated reams of real-time data about energy consumption, user settings and temperatures throughout his house. Rogers then used a branch of artificial intelligence known as machine learning to crunch the data to predict the thermal properties of his house. In keeping his house at a comfortable temperature, his experimental system now calculates optimal energy use while balancing factors such as the external temperature and the heating and cooling times of his house. “I’ve reduced the time over which the heating is actually used by at least 1 to 1.5 hours each day with no reduction in temperature,” Rogers says. That should equate to a saving of at least 10 to 15 per cent in energy consumption.
But we mustn’t forget that such complicated systems are not practical for all homes across the world. Roger and his colleagues are developing a thermostat that can learn the entire thermal properties of a home from a single, central device. The aim is to replace existing thermostats. The algorithms used to control this new thermostat are already being tested around the University of Southampton.
Jatin Singh, CEO of Skymet Weather says, “Providers should soon sell heating and temperature control services, not units of energy. But while such services may be available to industrial users, a domestic equivalent in India may still be many years away.”
Till the ‘smarter home’ concept is achieved, seems like the people of Delhi and north India will have to rely on the old, tried, tested and most trusted traditional ways (hand-made heaters or ‘kangirs’ in Kashmir) to keep warm in the icy winter months.
