Energy Consumption Management in Residential Sector for the Non-geeks
摘要
India’s domestic sector contributes 26% of the nation’s electricity consumption. To address this, the Indian government has implemented many residential energy efficiency programs, such as schemes for upgrading old appliances to new energy-efficient ones and solar rooftop initiatives. Additionally, popular smart home applications assist users in monitoring their home energy. However, understanding the monitored data and creating custom energy-saving automation requires users to spend time on creative ways to develop automation ideas, browse community platforms, and sometimes learn the basics of coding. This process is time-consuming in today’s hectic lifestyle, leading many non-geeks (regular users) who don’t know how to code to give up on such smart home apps. Moreover, all of these solutions have been primarily technology-oriented. Hence, this paper aims to have a user-centric approach by providing home automation enthusiasts with a home energy management application. This approach identifies trends from their home energy-monitored data and device usage patterns to offer custom automation ideas without requiring any prior coding knowledge. This saves the users’ home energy and helps them manage their daily routines. We used primary and secondary research to make affinity mapping and identify research gaps. After designing and developing the application, we conducted user testing to evaluate its effectiveness. The proposed application, “EnergyWise,” focuses on IoT-based energy monitoring of individual devices, using which the AI Copilot provides users with custom automation ideas, energy-saving suggestions, device fault detection, and a platform for online purchase of home automation products. This design can become the one-stop solution for home automation enthusiasts by simplifying the decision-making process of automation creation and home routine management.