The Digital Home Business Group of Renesas Technology Europe and AND Technology Research, have announced a collaboration to develop an "In Home Energy Monitor" demonstration system. The In Home Energy Monitor (IHEM) demonstration makes use of technology, such as zero power LCD displays, ZigBee communication and load profile analysis to facilitate monitoring of energy consumption within the home, to identify the appliances that are consuming the energy and to enable intelligent decisions to dis-connect and re-connect loads.
Using the IHEM it is possible to identify specific load types (e. g. lamp, iron, kettle etc.) that are connected to the in-home power network, and the point at which they are connected, and then to remotely disconnect the load, if desired, using a relay within each power outlet. The communication within the IHEM utilises the ZigBee wireless communications standard and can be further developed to use Renesas' acclaimed DCSK PLC solution, if desired. The zero power LCD is based on bi-stable crystal technology, which retains an image without any voltage being applied.
This type of display makes it ideal for battery-operated, portable devices that do not require high refresh rate. The reflective nature of the technology provides wide viewing angles, high brightness and contrast, as well as sunlight readability. The IHEM is capable of measuring both mains current and voltage, providing the ability for mains timing and quality calculations to be made. Each of the IHEM Load Monitor modules has a relay fitted inside, allowing remote power-off of the attached appliance. At the heart of the IHEM is the Renesas M16C/28 MCU, offering up to 128K flash with 12K RAM and 4K of data flash (running the ZigBee network stack) and the R8C/25 Tiny (running load profiling on a 20MHz 8-bit CPU with up to 64K flash, 3K RAM and a 2K data flash).
The IHEM set is available on loan from both AND TR and Renesas or may be purchased directly from AND TR. Customer-specific implementations can be prepared by AND TR. AND TR is preparing an applications note based on coded examples prepared for the R8C/M16C microcontroller families. This will explain the load profiling work that has been done and illustrate the analysis technique used.
