Domestic Energy Saver

Abstract

Most of the activities in the modern world are heavy power consumers. Therefore, wasting of power is identified as a critical factor which is badly impacted the environmental and economic growth. Using electrical appliances such as ceiling fans and bulbs in the commercial and domestic environment unnecessarily is identified as a main way of wasting power. As a solution, this paper proposes the designing and producing of a power saving device for ceiling fans and bulbs. Variables such as room temperature, light intensity and the number of people present in the location were considered as parameters to control ceiling fans and bulb automatically, so as to save power by changing the speed and turning off when not necessary. This device is consisting of six main units namely a main control unit using Arduino Nano microcontroller, bidirectional visitor counter unit using two Passive Infrared motion sensors, temperature and light intensity measuring unit using a LM35 temperature sensor and a light dependent resistor sensor, an output display unit using 1604 LCD display, ceiling fan controller unit using a fan regulator that was constructed using two RC circuits, a relay module and a bulb controller unit. Ceiling fan speed and the delay time to switch off the appliances is controlled using a fuzzy logic controller. Inputs of the fuzzy logic controller are temperature difference with the set temperature, rate of change of temperature difference within a five-minute interval, difference of the number of people inside the location with the set number of people and the rate of change of number of people within a five-minute interval. It was observed that, for the test cases, an average of 318Wh per day could be saved from a single bulb and a ceiling fan while avoiding unnecessary usage of appliances.