Study of Home Energy Management System for DC-based Nanogrid

Efficiency has become a key parameter of development when designing any electrical power distribution system. Meanwhile, a significant attention has been paid to the design of nanogrid, which is comprising a residential house with renewable energy sources. A direct current (DC) distribution system with high and low voltage home appliances and devices within a house is called a DC-based nanogrid. For such distribution system, an efficient, stable and robust power management system is required. This paper proposes a novel 4-level DC-based home energy management system (DC HEMS), which is considering the efficiency of both energy conversion loss and cost. Numerical simulation results reveal that the proposed 4-level DC HEMS for DC-based nanogrid can achieve the efficiency improvement of 24.9% compared to the conventional 3-level DC HEMS in smart home environment.