ABSTRACT
This research work introduces a novel human detection sensor on an IoT node so as to increase the efficiency of sensing human beings in a building, it also provide power management and control since Nigeria supply far less than what was actually demanded, based on the power baseline report submitted to the office of the vice president in 2015, which stated that only 10% of the power demanded was supplied, these couple with the fact that energy wastage is rampant in the country. This thesis presented an efficient energy management in buildings using Internet of Things (IoT) by construction of an IoT based human detection system and IoT based power management and control system. The power management and control IoT board make use of contactless current sensor which make the installation far easier, as many literature uses either the series resistance method or the current transformer method for sensing flow of current through a given load. The prototype was successfully implemented, installed and tested, the system was developed to run in the real world and several data was generated. Based on the data generated and analyzed the system was found to have 38% energy saving since the load is always automatically off when no human being is in the office that it was installed.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Nigeria is a nation yet to find a sustainable solution to the challenge of electric power supply shortage. Despite the increasing population, in 2015 it was documented in Nigeria power baseline report, which was submitted to the office of the vice president, that about 40.7% of Nigeria population are not connected to the national power grid. As for those connected, power supply has been a real predicament as about 90% of the total power demanded was not adequately supplied. As at 2015 the total installed capacity was 12,552MW and average operational capacity was 3,879MW out of which 7.4% was lost in the process of transmission and up to 27.7% was rejected at the distribution. This leaves the whole country with about 2,519MW (20% of installed capacity). In the same year Nigeria electricity demand was estimated to be 24,380MW, which means that just 10 % of the power demand was actually supplied. It is therefore not supersizing that Nigeria was ranked the second poorest electric power supply in the world, as it generated approximately 5,000 MW of power for the population of over 150 million people as compared to the second largest economy in Africa which is South Africa, that produces over 40,000 MW of energy for 62 million people. (The advisory power team report, 2015.)
In an estimation based on per capital consumption, South African generates 31 times higher than Nigeria while Ghana with a smaller population generates 2.9 times higher than Nigeria.(Https://www.power-nigeria.com/en/industry-news/poor-power-supply-in- nigeri a-what-is-the-reason.html, 2019.) This clearly indicate that Nigeria is generating far less than what the country actually required.
Despite the shortage of electric power supply, a lot of wastage and inefficient utilization is encountered at the consumer end. This wastage or inefficient utilization can be attributed to either carelessness or forgetfulness of users who often leave appliances such as security light and other electrical appliances on, even when they are not needed, especially in public buildings, and users ignorance of using energy saving devices. Moreover there are no sufficient feedback mechanism for the occupant of a building on their power consumption except for the monthly utility bills. The monthly utility bills only give indication of bulk consumption and does not indicate per appliance consumption, therefore one cannot easily detect current leakages or faults within the building, which gives rise to additional power wastage.
Currently, communication networks have knitted the globe together such that anyone can reach anywhere from anywhere, and the Internet is at the heart of these networks. Internet of Things (IoT) was listed as one of the most common applications of internet in recent time. It has been defined in many ways according to different literatures but IoT can simply be defined as a technological way of connecting anything from anywhere in any field through the internet as shown in Plate I (Achary & Jenith, 2017), (Wu et al., 2017), (Mahmoud et al., 2016).
Connection of anything from anywhere now makes it possible for us to connect every home appliance to the Internet in other to measure, monitor and control its power consumption. The idea in this project was to use the ever growing IoT technology to effectively manage, and record data of power consumption in buildings. This will enable building occupants monitor their power consumption on the go, as well as control it remotely. Also, with a human detection sensor node in the IoT system, certain appliances can be controlled automatically whether or not, the user forget to power down the appliances when it’s not in use. An IoT device monitoring the power consumed in the building with ability to control the appliances, working in conjunction with another IoT device monitoring human presence in a given space in the building such as rooms, this will surely go a long way in solving the problem of power wastage in the country.
1.2 Statement of the Research Problem
Despite the shortage of electric power supply (The advisory power team report, 2015.), a lot of wastage and inefficient utilization is encountered at the consumer end. This wastage or inefficiency in power usage can be attributed to either carelessness or forgetfulness of users who often leave appliances such as security light and other electrical appliances switched-on when they are not needed especially in public buildings. Moreover, there is no feedback mechanism for the occupants of a building on power consumption level, except for the monthly utility bills. The monthly bills only give indication of bulk consumption and does not indicate per appliance consumption; therefore, one cannot easily detect current leakages or fault within the building, which gives rise to additional power wastage. Additionally, there is no regional or national power consumption data that could, over time, help the government and/or the power company to plan or make policy on power generation and usage. Manual collection of such building energy consumption data capturing mechanism that could be quite tedious and cost prohibitive (Akkaya et al., 2015).
1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of this project is to develop an IoT based energy management and control system to archive energy efficiency in buildings. To realize this aim, the objectives of this research is to:
1. Develop a contactless IoT based energy measurement and control system.
2. Develop an IoT based human detector sensor node.
3. Develop a web application to save the data generated by the IoT device and provide an interface for control of connected appliance by every user.
4. Test and evaluate the developed system i.e. objectives 1, 2, and 3.
1.4 Justification of the Study
To manage electricity consumption in this country based on what is generated and consumed, it is paramount to generate consumption data at varying granularity. Knowing building consumption data will be beneficial to individuals and also to the national electricity managers. However it will be very difficult and cost prohibitive to generate this data manually. Developing an IoT system to ease data collection and control remotely and/or automatically control appliances becomes very important in other to achieve efficient management of energy. Considering the fact that Nigeria is still generating far less than the load demand based on our growing population, an efficient energy management of the available energy is key.
1.5 Scope of the Study
The focus of this work is on development of an IoT system for energy monitoring and control of an air conditioning unit in a building which will also collect hourly energy consumption data for the air conditioner and store same in the cloud. The system consist of an IoT device for energy monitoring and control, an IoT based human detector sensor node to sense human presence in a room and react according to the program, a web application to interface the two IoT device in the cloud for remote control of the air conditioner and for storage of the air conditioner hourly power consumption data. The project will not focus on the implementation of the Gateway but rather make use of a Wi- Fi modem or any Hotspot for its communication to the web server, and the maximum load capability of the switch (AC Socket) shall be limited to just 30A.
This material content is developed to serve as a GUIDE for students to conduct academic research
CLOUD BASED ENERGY MANAGEMENT IN BUILDINGS USING IoT FOR EFFICIENT USE OF UTILITY POWER
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