Development of an open-source smart energy house for K-12 education

Frederik Geth, Jan Verveckken, Niels Leemput, Juan Van Roy, Jef Beerten, Pieter Tielens, Valentijn De Smedt, Sandro Iacovella, Borbala Hunyadi, Ninah Koolen, Hans De Clercq, Georges Gielen (+6 others)
2013 2013 IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting  
Energy consumption in buildings represents about one-third of the world-wide energy consumption. Consumers often are not fully aware of energy-conserving measures they could take. Intelligent control of the heating and lighting systems in buildings is one way to increase energy-efficiency. Children and young adults influence domestic energy consumption, by using appliances such as TV and lighting. Often, they are not aware of the costs incurred. The goal of this research is to develop a
more » ... nal platform for energy efficiency education aimed towards the full age range of K-12 education. A scaled model of a house is used, to explain the energy flows in the residential setting, well-known by the target audience. A model house is designed, with actual loads, using an Arduino Uno electronics platform as an interface to a PC. A reference program in the integrated development environment S4A allows visualizing the energy consumption in a simple manner. The children control a number of scaled household appliances interactively. A survey with the first 25 children (aged 10-12) suggests higher awareness of energy consumption.
doi:10.1109/pesmg.2013.6672863 fatcat:mrhjqw7s6ra45fc7jdiiwcw5na