Energy Efficient IoT Home Monitoring And Automation

System

Raneen Ayman Alzafarani Ghadi Ahmad Alyahya

Computer Science department Computer Science department
King Abdul-Aziz University Jeddah, King Abdul-Aziz University Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia
Ralzafarani@stu.kau.deu.sa Gmohammad0003@stu.kau.deu.sa

Abstract—Saudi Arabia has encountered a great economic
growth in oil and gas resources in the past decades, and if
domestic consumption rates continue in their current pathways,
it is expected that there will be a contraction in oil exports, which
will negatively affect Saudi Arabia's ability in the future to
maintain the current high levels of spending in both investment
and consumption. Residential consumption in Saudi Arabia
accounts for 51% of total electricity sold in 2012. Therefore,
targeting private residencies will reduce both the amount of fuel
needed to generate electricity and the amount of greenhouse
gases. This project aims to build a smart home system. This
system will monitor and analyze the energy consumption, utilize
lights when needed, program the temperature by keeping your
house warmer than normal when you are away and setting the
temperature as high as comfortable if needed. Then display the
information to improve customer awareness by using colored
LEDs to alert customers to different parameters, and turn their
loads on and off based on the cost of electricity use as well as
enable consumers to control some of their home appliances usage
through a mobile application to reduce electricity usage and
minimize energy waste.
Keywords— Energy Efficient, Home Automation, IoT,
Smart Home.
List of Abbreviations—IoT Internet of Things, Energy
Information Administration (EIA).
in the efficiency and rationalization of consumption remains
one of the most important factors affecting the energy future in
Saudi Arabia and the world. The Residential sector in Saudi
Arabia consumes roughly equivalent to half of the country’s
electricity consumption, as shown in Fig. 1.
Utility companies are scrambling to meet the demand but
they are finding solutions thanks to the IoT. IoT is making
energy use more efficient, which should help relieve some of
the stress on energy demand. Hence, it is important to adopt the
concept of Smart Home technology, which is all about the
automation, management of your daily life and most of all the
enhancement of energy-efficiency.
In this scene this project aims to build a Smart Home
system, as it represents the most suitable solution to meet the
contribution to energy savings, and provide more than 60% of
construction costs.
II. INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT)
IoT refers to the concept of connecting any device to the
Internet through embedded devices and software to enable data
collection and exchange. IoT is a network of uniquely
identifiable objects and products that automatically transfer
data over a network without human interaction using IP
connectivity.

I. INTRODUCTION
The use of energy has been a key in the development of the
human society by helping to adapt to the environment. Energy
is the main source of income in Saudi Arabia, and the world
relies heavily on oil as a major source of energy. The
consumption of energy has led to major threats to climate
change, environmental pollution, and human health. Electricity
is mostly generated by the burning of coal which is highly
polluting. Carbon dioxide emissions has skyrocketed in the
current century, ergo it is the leading cause of smog, acid rain,
and global warming.
The increasing use of energy threatens the volume of oil
exports, for that reason diversifying the energy sources and Fig. 1. Distribution of consumption In Saudi Arabia
developing alternative and non-renewable sources of energy,
including solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy Source: Electricity & Cogeneration Regulatory Authority (ECRA)
(2014)
should be taken into consideration. However, the improvement

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 IoT solutions offer particular value for businesses
depending on the different industry. IoT solutions enable
businesses to analyze data generated by sensors. This data can
lead to greater productivity, higher profitability and better
decision-making.
III. SMART HOME
A smart home, is a home that is equipped with network-
connected devices that could communicate, send information
and take commands to automate and control household systems
such as lighting, doors, temperature and surveillance, either
remotely through a smartphone, tablet, computer or a separate
system within the home itself. Smart home uses sensors to
detect movements and changes in your home. IoT is a key
component of smart homes.
Smart home help ease the demands of your daily routine.
With Smart home, you can control your surroundings to
provide comfort, security, and energy efficiency.
IV. PROBLEM DEFINITION
The consumption of petroleum products has increased
significantly in Saudi Arabia as a result of the increase in the
population and the increase in the demand for electricity
particularly in the summer. According to [1], Saudi Arabia’s
oil consumption has risen 369% since 1980 to approximately
three million barrels per day, eating into its oil exports, as
shown in Fig. 2.
The electricity sector is the main consuming sector of oil as
demonstrated in [2]. Saudi Arabia’s primary energy
consumption based on oil and natural gas. As shown Fig. 3,
Saudi Arabia uses oil to generate the majority of its electricity,
with crude oil accounting for 29% of electricity production in
2013.
Oil and natural gas are the kingdom’s wealth. Therefore,
preserving them is a must.
Fig. 2. Saudi Arabian Oil Production vs Consumption (thousand
bbl/day)
Source: Energy Information Administration (EIA)
The high rate of energy consumption in a country indicates
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Fig. 3. Saudi Arabia power generation mix
Source: Electricity & Cogeneration Regulatory Authority (ECRA)
(2014)
that the country is in an advanced standard of living, and
therefore the high use of vehicles, air conditioners and
electrical appliances. Since energy costs are more related to the
amount of time the device is on than to how much current the
device draws, according to Johnston [1] it was estimated by
The EIA that in peak summer months, the electricity
consumption reaches its highest when electricity demand for
air conditioning.
Saudi Arabia has encountered a great economic growth in
oil and gas resources in the past decades, and if domestic
consumption rates continue in their current pathways, it is
expected that there will be a contraction in oil exports, which in
turn affects the oil revenues, which negatively affect the Saudi
Arabia's ability in the future to maintain the current high levels
of spending in both investment and consumption.
V. PROJECT AIM AND GOALS
This system main goal is to monitor energy consumption
and reduce it if possible by developing a Home automation
system. In addition, a secondary goal concerned with
minimizing the electricity bills cost. These goals can be
achieved through:
 Help in reducing energy consumption.
 Embrace smart Home technology.
 Increase efficiency and enable new services inside
homes.
VI. PROJECT SCOPE
This system is going to help monitoring energy
consumption practically on summer period in Saudi Arabia by
creating a Home automation system that can be controlled from
anywhere inside and outside the house using a website and a
mobile application through a development board. This project
will target homeowners to make it easier for them to save time,
improve convenience, enhance comfort and most of all save
electricity costs.
 VII. ENERGY MONITORING
Measuring or monitoring household consumption is as
simple as comparing and looking at bills in different times, but
that will not help much due to belated information so user do
not have the chance to get the idea that their consumption
increased and so on.
The way to provide the user with an immediate information
about their consumption is by using energy meter plugged in
into appliances that shows the consumption in a current time,
the feedback of consumption can be viewed through display
monitors or mobile application. The Smart Metering Working
Group estimated that energy meters offers more information to
users, which could help reduce household consumption of
energy with other potential benefits; as mentioned in [12]
An experimental study analysis of electricity conservation
demonstrated that both prompting and feedback techniques
were effective in reducing daily electricity consumption, so
with encouraging people to save electricity alongside with
monitoring could make a change; as demonstrated in [13].
An old research has indicated that frequent feedback could
reduce residential electricity consumption by 10% to 15 %; as
shown in [14]. Back then feedback was primarily given in
written form, this procedure might not be practical so if the
form were replaced with electronic forms displayed through a
mobile app as mentioned before then there is a big chance for
reducing more than 15% on these days.
VIII. APPLIANCES ELECTRICITY CONSUMTION
There are two classifications of the used appliance in
homes:
A. Strict appliances
Strict appliances are appliances that the user does not want
any automatic adjustments or schedule on it. Such as
refrigerators, heating systems, air conditioners, entertainment
devices, etc. As in [3].
B. Flexible appliances
Flexible appliances can be given a schedule time and run it
at different times all day long. Such as washing machines,
dishwashers or phone chargers, which are appliances needs to
be run but stick to be used within a known timeframe
sometimes (such as dishwasher needs to be used every day
after 12 PM) as shown in [3].
Therefore the system will not be able to control the strict
appliances against user’s will. Monitoring strict appliances and
alerting the user when exceeding a certain limit is enough.
Nevertheless, for the flexible appliance, monitoring with
automation will be more helpful since it will not affect the
needs of the end-user.
Each class of them has appliances that are classified as the
most electricity consuming appliance, but that is different from
one place to another or from one time to another (winter,
summer, etc.). This project is going to focus on Saudi Arabia,
due to the weather it has. Air conditioners come to be the most
electricity consuming appliances in Saudi Arabia, as it
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consume 60% of total electricity consumption in the residential
sector, as demonstrated in [4].
IX. DEVELOPMENT BOARDS FOR DO IT YOURSELF (DIY)
PROJECTS
There are many development Boards for DIY Projects that
are open-source electronics platform and uses microcontrollers
or inexpensive single board computers to automate awesome
stuff. The most popular development boards are the Arduino,
the Raspberry Pi, and the BeagleBone. Since it is really hard to
choose the right platform for the device you want to construct,
this project is going to consider selecting the development
board after illustrating the characteristic between these
developments boards, their own strengths and weakness and
the type of projects that are suitable for each platform, as
shown in the following subsections.
A. Arduino
Arduino is a microcontroller motherboard. They are for
single-purpose projects.
You can tell your board what to do by sending a set of
instructions to the microcontroller on the board. To do so
you use the Arduino programming language (based on
Wiring), and the Arduino Software (IDE), based on
Processing, as demonstrated in [5].
1) Advantages: Arduino software is easy-to-use for
beginners. It is flexible, cheap and consumes very little power.
With the popularity of Arduino you can find tutorials and
projects very easily.
2) Disadvantages: The Arduino is a beginner board, but it
still takes a little while to get used to using something without a
graphic interface. Because it's cheap and small, the Arduino
can't usually handle a lot of different processes at once, so it's
not good for projects that are incredibly complicated or require
a lot of computing power, according to [6].
3) Project that are suited for Arduino: An Arduino board
is well suited for simple repetitive tasks and in interacting with
objects in the real world such as turning on and off lamps,
opening and closing a garage door, reading the outside
temperature, control panel for a garden and controlling a
simple robot.
B. Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi is more complicated to use than an Arduino. It
is fully functional and general-purpose computer can run a
proper operating system usually derivative of Linux operating
system, it has the ability to run multiple programs, according to
[11].
1) Advantages: Even though Raspberry Pi is powerful but
it is easy-to-use for beginners. It can multitask, support two
USB ports which can be used to operate it like a computer with
a mouse and keyboard, it also connect wirelessly to the Internet
and for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like
spreadsheets, word processing, browsing the internet, and
playing games; according to [15].
 2) Disadvantages: Unlike Arduino and BeagleBone,
Raspberry Pi does not have that many options to interface with
external sensors or buttons. With Raspberry pi you need to
install some libraries and software for interfacing sensors and
other electronic component unlike how it is very easy to
interface sensors with the Arduino.
3) Project that are suited for Raspberry Pi: Raspberry Pi
is suited for project that need to be controlled from a web page.
Raspberry Pi is also suited for projects that requires a graphic
user interface (GUI).
C. BeagleBone
For Projects with External Sensors or Networking.
BeagleBone is a mini computer. It is a combination of
Arduino and Raspberry. Its external interface and flexibility
similar to an Arduino yet it is more similar to a Raspberry Pi in
terms of power; you can connect a mouse, a keyboard, a screen
display and it will behave as fully functional computer; as
demonstrated in [6].
1) Advantages: With BeagleBone you don't need extra
hardware to set it up like you would with the Raspberry Pi.
2) Disadvantages: BeagleBone system is more difficult to
get used to than the Raspberry Pi. The BeagleBone is not that
good as a standalone computer or entertainment system.
3) Project that are suited for BeagleBone: The
BeagleBone is suited for projects that might seem a little
complicated for Arduino, but don't need any complex graphics
like the Raspberry Pi; as demonstrated in [6].
X. SELECTING THE PLATFORM FOR THE PROJECT
According to the previous section, Arduino are best suited
for home automation project but probably won’t work well
with controlling a garden panel for instance to connect to the
internet, have a multi-touch display, and feature full
automation unlike the Raspberry according to [6]. Also,
BeagleBone doesn't have quite the same amount of fervor
around it as the Raspberry Pi not to mention the difficulty for
finding tutorials and projects for it.
Therefore, this project is going to eliminate the BeagleBone
and use both the Arduino and the Raspberry.
homeowners to different parameters, as well as the option to
turn loads on and off based on the cost of electricity use.
Homeowners can keep tabs on that information via
smartphone.
Structural strategies, in contrast is going to be obtained by
monitoring and automating the appliance that are connected to
the monitoring device. Sensor will monitor the energy usage in
real time and sends that data wirelessly to the specified devices
in your home, including the monitor.
Fig. 4 shows a block diagram of the home automation
system showing the various hardware interfaces which are
assumed to be included in the system, for now. The system
may consider extracting/adding some of these hardware.
The main heart of the system that do all data processing and
decision making is the Raspberry Pi (Master) it will serve the
front-end interface to any web browser. An Arduino, powered
from the Raspberry Pi will be acting as a slave. The Arduino
will serve the purpose of data acquisition from the sensors and
then actuating the devices such as LEDs and AC accordingly.
The LCD display is used for displaying the messages,
appliance state and sensor readings. Next we have the Wi-Fi
connection which is used for controlling the electronic devices
via smartphone.
Fig. 5 shows a Home Model Prototype of the system. The
system is going to monitor energy consumption on the
appliances that are colored in blue.
Feedback on consumption is very necessary for saving
energy. There are methods for altering household energy
consumption that should be used for different devices such as
air conditioning lighting, water heater and there are a lot more,
but this system is going to maintain the energy consumption of
these devices.

XI. SOLUTION
Two approaches are employed to reduce residential energy
consumption. Informational strategy which is based on
providing information, and aim to alter an individual’s
knowledge or habits, as shown in [7]. It is assumed that mental
changes will ultimately affect consumption behavior as shown
in [8]. The second strategy is the Structural strategies which
address the context of energy consumption (by providing
incentives, for example) - effectively making the conservation
or efficient use of energy more appealing to the individual as in
[8].
Informational Strategies keeps homeowners aware of their
total energy that they are using at any time, which will gave
them better response to that usage and take control of their
costs. The system is going to use colored LEDs to alert Fig. 4. Home Automation Block Diagram

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Fig. 5. Home Model Prototype
A. Air Conditioner
A programmable thermostat helps regulate a home
temperature at any time during any season whether you are at
home, asleep, or away. This system is going to offer the
following settings:
 Setting the temperature to drop by 8 degree when you
are away and sleeping in the winter. In the summer,
set the temperature to go up by 7 degree when you
are away and 4 degree when you are sleeping.
Turning the temperature way up or down won’t help
heat or cool you home any faster but it will make
your system work overtime and can wreak havoc on
your energy bill; according to [9].
 Making note of your absence as to keep the
temperature set at the energy savings set-points for
long periods of time (at least seven or eight hours),
can help consume unnecessary amounts of energy.
B. Light
This system is going to offer the following settings:
 Turning lights off remotely.
 Turning outdoor-use lights off automatically at
daylight such as pathway lights and porch lights.
 Turning outdoor-use lights off automatically based
on your presence in the home, such as pathway lights,
step lights and porch lights.
C. Water Heater
This system is going to offer the following settings:
 Adjusting the water heater thermostat at your
convenient degree.
 Set water heater thermostat at 120ºF, which is also
useful for slowing mineral buildup and corrosion in
your water heater and pipes; as demonstrated in [10].
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Although some manufacturers set water
heater thermostats at 140ºF, most
households usually require less than that
amount. Water heated at 140ºF also poses a
safety hazard—scalding. [10].
XII. CONCLUSION
This paper discussed the possible solutions to reduce
energy consumption and cost bill either by automation or
mentoring. It talked how each one of these methods can work
and affect positively on the consumption. It also stated the
suitable development boards for building this system and the
appliances that the system is planning to monitor in the next
step.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
At the end of this paper, the authors would like to extend
their sincere and heartfelt obligation towards all the people who
have helped them. They are thankful for their for her aspiring
guidance, and helpful comments and advice during this time.
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