Using the internet of things to enable electrical load optimisation

Abstract

The Internet of Things is a new paradigm of more and more physical objects, or “things”, becoming connected to the Internet. As more and more physical objects are enhanced with digital intelligence, the Internet of Things grows. The communication with the objects could be uni-directional. In such cases, the object merely posts a status of itself or updates information about itself on a server. More interesting, however, is when there is bi-directional communication allowing the object to post information about itself and also allowing the object to be controlled by some process. This paper describes a research project in balancing the electrical load in the kitchens of an IT organisation. Ten kitchen appliances were enhanced with digital intelligence and could send back information about electrical consumption. In addition, however, the appliances could be switched on and off depending on certain conditions. This paper would be of interest to any readers who need to balance electrical load due to physical constraints or for financial constraints.