Total home energy management system
AssigneeWhirlpool Corporation
InventorsGale Richard Horst, Jiannong Zhang, Andriy Dmytrovych Syvokozov
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system that facilitates and implements energy savings decisions by a home owner. The system will provide a mechanism to reduce the peak level of energy demand. A controller in logical communication with energy consuming appliances responds to request for energy from energy consuming appliances and devices by permitting or curtailing energy supply to the appliances or devices based on evaluation of a plurality of logical considerations. The controller may be operated to provide energy to fewer than all of the energy requesting appliances to reduce the energy demand on an energy supply source, including the instantaneous peak demand.
Claims26
A method for managing the supply of energy to a plurality of energy consuming devices connected to a power distribution system of an energy supplying system, comprising:
- receiving an energy demand request associated with an energy consuming device in need of energy at an electronic controller;
- receiving energy supply data including energy cost rate data from an energy provider at the controller which provides for differing cost rates at different times throughout the day;
- the electronic controller deciding whether the energy supply is to be utilized by the energy consuming device making an energy demand request immediately or at a delayed time based on the energy demand request and the energy supply data;
- and
- the electronic controller connecting the energy supply to the energy consuming devices at the decided time to minimize the cost of the supplied energy.
An energy management system for managing a plurality of energy consuming devices connected on a power distribution system of an energy supplying system, comprising:
- a logical communication device associated with at least one of the energy consuming devices to generate an energy demand request;
- and
- a controller in logical communication with the energy supplying system to receive energy supply data including energy cost rate data which provides for differing cost rates at different times throughout the day from the energy supplying system, in logical communication with the logical communication device to receive the energy demand request, and configured to control the supply of energy to the at least one of the energy consuming devices between a current time and a future time by making an energy supply decision based on the energy supply data including energy cost rate data and the energy demand request to minimize the cost of the supplied energy.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.