Practical considerations for controller selection in residential energy management systems: a review

Abstract

A review of the wide variety of system controllers available on the market along with the practical applicability of each is discussed in this paper. The system controllers that are discussed include programmable logic controllers, microcontrollers and single board computers. These controllers are generally not competing for the same market share however, some of the capabilities of these controllers overlap with one another which makes the selection of an appropriate system controller a complex decision. The practical considerations of controller selection are discussed and reviewed in this article, a new trade off analysis is presented along with a practical example thereof. The practical example that was used to illustrate controller selection was a residential energy management system which would be installed alongside a grid-tied 2 kWp photovoltaic system. The aim of the energy management system is to ensure that all the photovoltaic generated energy is consumed locally within the residence and not fed into the distribution network. Such a system is applicable in areas where no net-metering policies are in place