Introduction to wrap technology, a very low cost communication technology for connecting household appliances at zero cost

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The process of great transformation of the global energy system according to the concept of “smart grid” involves the direct collaboration of household appliances, in particular white goods, which, to this purpose, are becoming "smart" and are able to exchange information with digital power meters through suitable communication infrastructures. But, unfortunately, there still are objective problems relating to connectivity that hinder the rapid spread of these products. Wr@p technology, which Indesit is going to liberalize with the help of Renesas (Japan), has the aim to completely solve these problems.

[Indesit Company Spa – Fabriano (AN) - Italy] Page 2

How Wr@pTM Technology can speed up the diffusion of smart appliances

Abstract. The process of great transformation of the global energy system according to

the concept of “smart grid” involves the direct collaboration of household appliances, in

particular white goods, which, to this purpose, are becoming "smart" and are able to

exchange information with digital power meters through suitable communication

infrastructures. But, unfortunately, there still are objective problems relating to connectivity

that hinder the rapid spread of these products. Wr@p technology, which Indesit is going to

liberalize with the help of Renesas (Japan), has the aim to completely solve these

problems.

Introduction

The growing demand for energy and the absolute need to reduce climate impacts in the world is producing a strong convergence of scientific, industrial and political interests towards the use of information and communication techno-logies (ICT) to support the process of structural transformation of each phase of the energy cycle: from generation to transmission, from distribution to sale, to accumulation and, above all, to the smart consumption of energy. This virtuous link between ICT and the world of energy is commonly identified with the term Smart Grid, or even Internet of Energy, just to highlight a paradigm shift, a structural and techno-logical revolution that leads to a network that carries energy, information and control and is composed of devices and highly distributed and cooperating systems.

Inside the concept of smart grid there is therefore the need to collect and process information in real time, generated by appropriate measuring devices and sensors distributed on the network in order to achieve a coordinated control of different parts. There is also the need to encourage a more active role of the end users in the industrial sector and especially in the residential one, with the aim of stimulating - through appropriate levers of economic convenience - a more careful and colla-borative participation in the management of energy consumption to reduce peak through the leveling of absorption profiles. In both cases it is thus essential the creation of adequate communication infrastructures [1,7] associated with the distribution network.


PREVIOUS INDESIT’S EXPERIENCE IN THE HOME AUTOMATION FIELD

Home automation is being addressed by Indesit for the first time about 25 years ago when President Vittorio Merloni conceived ArisionTM, the "digital butler" able to speak and to control the house, born in 1985 with the collaboration of the former Merloni Elettrodomestici (Indesit since 2005) and ISI Italia, a small Italian company based in Rome. It was a specific device for managing security issues and for controlling electric appliances, which was later marketed by

FATMA of Ericsson's Group. It was the first device in the world able to enter into a relationship with the household and to inform the user via telephone using voice messages. The experience of Arision was a strong stimulus for the future commitment of the Company in introducing digital technology in control systems of household appliances, with the aim of giving to the products a greater versatility and "intelligence".

Fig. 1: Ariston Digital, the first system of connected appliances (year 1999)

Fig. 2: Leon@rdo, the first “internet appliance” dedicated to the kitchen (year 1999)

This commitment began to show the first results in the second half of the '80s, with the first digital products for cooking and refrigeration, but found its full realization in the '90s, when Vittorio Merloni decided to launch the ambitious project - at that time really very innovative for the white goods industry - to acquire within the Company, traditionally based on an electromechanical culture, all the skills necessary to develop, fully autonomously, digital control systems for its products. From this project was born Margherita Dialogic (1995), the first digital washing machine capable to communicate with the surrounding environment, and then the beginning (1997) of Indesit's relationship with Enel, the big Italian utility, aimed at optimizing the energy consumption of the house through the dialogue among the white goods and the digital electricity meter (at that time in development).

The interaction with Enel, Echelon1 and the MIT of Boston allowed the Company, under the strong commitment of Francesco Caio (CEO, at that time) and President Vittorio Merloni, to devise and implement Ariston Digital (1999), the first system of household appliances (Figure 1), in the world, able to communicate among themselves and with the outside world through Leon@rdo (Figure 2), the first "Internet appliance" dedicated to the kitchen.

Through this experience, characterized by the great success of Margherita2000.com (Paris, 1 December 1999: Figure 3), the first appliance capable to communicate with a mobile phone and to interact with the web, and of “Margherita Pay-per-Use" (2002, Figure 4), the first washing machine where the

1 Echelon (Palo Alto, CA), leader in the field of data

communication, was partner of Enel in the project for

developing its new electricity meter.


user doesn't buy the product but just its service, the Company gained international credit and visibility. Thanks to this, Indesit was able to start playing an active role in CECED [4] - the European organization of manufacturers of home appliances - with the opportunity to effectively contribute, along with Electrolux, Bosch-Siemens, Whirlpool, Miele and other white goods manufacturers, to the development of common communication rules to ensure interoperability among products of different brands [5,6].

Fig. 3: Margherita2000.com, the first web based appliance interacting with

cellular phones (year 1999).

Fig. 4: Margherita pay-per-use (year 2002).

It was a long standardization process which is arriving to its first important finalization through the recent Energy@Home project [7] - spurred by Enel and developed in collaboration with Telecom Italia and Electrolux - which began officially in October 2009 and will terminate by 2010.

The goal of this project is to define, develop and make available all the hardware and software components (Figure 5) required to minimize the cost of electricity and reduce CO2 emissions through an appropriate dialogue among the household appliances and the digital energy meter, and to open the home to the world of value added services based on Internet.


Fig. 5: General architecture of Energy@home system

The dialogue between the electric utility and the household appliances is based on a new device of Enel called Smart Info, which has access via powerline (PLC communication) to all the data generated by the electricity meter and can benefit from a broadband internet connection made available by Telecom Italia through its new Home Gateway. The local network HAN (Home Area Network) is based on radio frequency and employs low power ZigBee technology [3]. The ZigBee based communication node, which is located within each element of the system (Smart Info, Home Gateway, appliances, smart plugs, smart sockets...), has a new "application profile", currently being developed by the four partners the project. This new profile incorporates the results of many years of work, aimed at ensuring interoperability among products of different brands, which has been done by CECED during the first half of this decade and recently standardized by CENELEC [5,6], and its

purpose is to complement the preexisting profiles Smart Energy (SE) [8,9] and Home Automation (HA) [10] of ZigBee protocol. It incorporates and extends the features of earlier SE and HA profiles in order to give to each white good the full potential that comes from his new role as "intelligent" element of a home automation system, and it is technically configured as an extension of the same "ZigBee Home Automation profile" (addition of appropriate new clusters to HA profile), expressing the results of many years of experience on connectivity issues of European manufacturers of household appliances. Indesit, pushed by its top management led by CEO Marco Milani and President Andrea Merloni, has recently officially joined the ZigBee Alliance [3] and it is producing a strong effort, supported by strategic alliances [11], with the aim of reducing the time-to-market of its "intelligent" products.


DYNAMIC DEMAND CONTROL

The recent experimentation of an old concept proposed in 1979 by prof. Fred. C. Schweppe of MIT (Boston, USA) is showing how it is possible to contribute to the stability of the electric grid through the

synergistic and synchronized action of digital appliances capable to continuously monitor the value of the mains frequency [21].

Fig. 6 - Dynamic Demand Control (DDC)

This is the concept of "Dynamic Demand Control" (DDC, Figure 6) [22], i.e. the possibility that a set of domestic appliances distributed over a large geographical area (may be an entire country like UK or Italy) and synchronized through the same frequency, can act in a synchronous manner to transfer or absorb power when the mains frequency, respectively, tends to fall below a certain threshold lower than 50 Hz or to rise above a certain threshold greater than 50 Hz (Figure 7).

In this way the joint and synchronous action of thousands of appliances produces, through the sum of the small contributions of electric power from each one, corrective actions which allow to ensure a substantially stable balance between the power generated by the power plants and the one absorbed by the downstream users, minimizing or even eliminating the costly interventions upstream (switching on of generators for meeting the increased demand for power, or putting them in standby mode when


there is an excess of production) which cause strong inefficiency and increase

harmful emissions to the environment.

Fig. 7 – DDC basic concept

Appliances which are best suited to perform this function are refrigerators and water heaters, i.e. those products that have a thermal accumulation (hot or cold) which allows them to manage the DDC function, preserving the quality of performances in any working condition.

In this regard, Indesit has been conducting an interesting experiment for several months in UK (Figure 8), with

refrigerators properly set for managing the DDC function [23, 24], and the first results are confirming the absolute validity of this approach, that is entirely complementary and synergistic with respect to the concept of energy management at home, being the project Energy@home its effective expression.

Fig. 8 – DDC trials in the world


WHITE GOODS AND CONNECTIVITY PROBLEMS

The great pioneering effort made by Indesit in the mid 90s, very appreciated also internationally [12,13], could not be finalized to the market for the following three main reasons:

the total lack at that time of communication rules shared by the various manufacturers of white goods,

the almost total absence in the homes of broadband (Internet penetration in the home relates to recent years and is still in progress)

and, last but not least, the excessive cost of the connectivity.

While the first two problems are going to be completely solved, the third remains a barrier to the spread of connectivity for mass products, although there will be day after day technical solutions with more affordable costs (such as ZigBee-based communication nodes, for instance), nevertheless the introduction of a communication node inside an appliance still causes "side effects" not negligible.

A first obstacle comes just from the presence of a communication node within a product - whose introduction, to be economically sustainable for the manufacturer, should be done on production line - because such node ties the appliance to the adopted technology and, in case of its evolution (that is

normal in the field of communication technology), the needed updates of the product would be a great burden for the user because they require the intervention of a specialized technician at home.

A second obstacle concerns the manufacturer that, to introduce the communication node within the products, is forced to make mechanical (hardware), electrical (extra wires) and electronic changes which tend to de-standardize the appliance and to increase its cost. This fact causes the creation of specific product lines which, though perfectly in line with commercial high-end offers, are unlikely they impact on mass production and that significantly contribute to the spread of smart appliances, as would be desirable to adequately support the parallel development of smart grids.

A third obstacle - which concerns the home-system and refers to the management of electricity consumptions according to the criteria of smart grid - is that the time required by the new generations of smart appliances for replacing all the products currently present in the homes is about ten or more years, so it is too long for properly supporting the parallel development of electricity networks.


Fig. 9 – Communication system based on Wr@pTM Technology

These problems have suggested, since from the early 2000s, the exploration of other paths in addition to the classical solution represented by the "communication node" put inside the household appliance, and Indesit has developed and successfully tested a technical solution that is very cheap2 but absolutely adequate for managing the energy issues coming from the smart grid's opportunities [14].

This solution (Figure 9) is called “Power Modulation” (PM) or Wr@pTM (WRAP stands for Web Ready Appliances Protocol) and, thanks to the strong support of the University of Parma, it was recently implemented on silicon [15,16,17,18,19] by Renesas, the Japanese firm founded by the consortium of Hitachi, Mitsubishi and NEC, and, after the free license agreement signed last March by President Andrea Merloni of

2 Wr@p technology uses the same electronic resources

already present in the appliance.

Indesit Company Spa, Wr@p technology will be shortly added as hardware peripheral to the new family of microcontrollers of Renesas dedicated to the new generation of household appliances commonly known as “smart appliances”. Therefore, in such a way, the low cost communication technology of Indesit will be soon liberalized and made available to all manufacturers of electrical household appliances that want to use it [20].

THE IMPORTANT ROLE OF “SMART PLUGS” AND “SMART SOCKETS”

The obstacle to the diffusion of smart appliances - able to manage electricity consumptions according to the criteria of smart grid -, due to the long time (more

than ten years) required for replacing all the traditional products currently present in the homes, could be overcome by using "smart plugs" (Figure 10).

Fig. 10 – Smart plugs for energy monitoring and control

A lot of “smart plugs” and “smart sockets” are invading the world, mainly coming from China. Their main purpose is to show to the user, through a simple LCD display, the energy consumption - and the related costs - of the electric loads (household appliances and other), in order to create a positive culture about the proper use of the energy and to increase his/her awareness on how reduce consumptions and costs [2].

The most advanced smart plugs are capable to communicate with a local network (based for instance on ZigBee, WiFi or other RF communication technology) and can control electric loads by using relays (on/off control). The connection to a local network is really a very important point, absolutely necessary for contributing to manage the energy consumption at home according to smart grids’ philosophy, but the on/off control can be used only to manage simple electric loads (Figure 11).

Fig. 11 – ON/OFF control of household appliances is not allowed

An on/off control isn’t accepted by users and manufacturers of white goods, because it can cause malfunction or failure of the appliance.

An on/off control could theoretically be accepted if the smart plug was capable to know the operating status of the appliance in order to switch off it only when possible, but, to do this, the collaboration of the appliance itself is mandatory.

By using Wr@p technology it is possible to overcome this problem, because the

appliance can send information on its operating status simply modulating the power absorption of one of its internal electric loads. To do this, however, smart plug should be able to decode the information sent by the appliance.

Transforming a standard “smart plug” to a Wr@p enabled one is quite easy: it is only necessary to add the specific logic for decoding the data sent by the appliance through a proper analysis of the measures done by the power meter located inside the plug (Figure 12).


Fig. 12 – Concept of Wr@p enabled smart plug


INTRODUCTION TO WR@P TECHNOLOGY

Wr@p Technology, also commonly

called “power modulation” (PM), has the aim to add point-to-point3 commu-nication capability to a household appliance without affecting its industrial cost, because uses the same electronic resources already present in it.

To do this, the appliance should have a control system based on a microcontroller and at least one electric load controlled through a triac.

The basic concept of PM is transmitting data by modulating the power absorbed by one of its electric loads. In this way, it is possible to transmit 50 or 60 bit per second, depending on the mains frequency, i.e. 6 or 7 bytes of coded data per second [15,16].

At first sight, this kind of transmission with a so limited baud rate seems to be too much poor, but actually covers perfectly what is necessary for satisfying all the grid’s needs.

In fact, for transmitting the appliance status, or some other information like a time interval, a temperature, statistical data, diagnostic data, fault codes, and so on, only few bytes are necessary.

Furthermore, PM communication is bi-directional: the appliance can receive 25 or 30 bytes per second, depending on the mains frequency (Figure 13). It means the appliance can receive commands and information, through a local network, from an energy manager placed in the home; it can also send, day by day, statistical and diagnostic data to a remote service centre which offers to the customer, for instance, high level services of remote assistance and preventive maintenance.

3 Wr@p Technology is a point-to-point communication

that allows a household appliance to directly

communicate with the “smart plug” or “smart socket”

that provides its power supply from the mains.

In order to connect a "Wr@p enabled" household appliance to a local network, a special adapter (commonly called “smart adapter”) placed between the appliance power cable and an electric socket is needed.

The “smart adapter” is simply a “smart plug” having a power meter, a proper logic for decoding the data sent by the appliance, and means for its con-nection to a local network (any LAN technology can be used). It can be integrated inside a socket, so generating a “smart socket”.

Thanks to Renesas4 (Japan) and University of Parma (Team of Prof. Paolo Ciampolini: [15-19] ), Wr@p technology was embedded inside a microcontroller peripheral (Figure 14) in order to guarantee repeatability of the data transmission from the household appliance.

Thanks to this repeatability, Indesit is able to offer the license of Wr@p technology (Figure 16) to any interested manufacturer of “smart plugs” and “smart sockets”, in order to create a new generation of devices which can interact with the grid and, in the same time, are able to directly communicate with the household appliances that receive AC power supply through them.

Wr@p technology is covered by international patents - most of them already granted -, which are owned by Indesit Company Spa – Fabriano (AN) Italy (www.indesitcompany.com).

Wr@pTM is a registered mark which is owned by Indesit Company Spa.

Wr@p (WRAP) stands for Web Ready Appliances Protocol.

4 Renesas is a Japanese firm established by the

consortium of Hitachi, Mitsubishi and NEC.

http://www.indesitcompany.com/

Fig. 13 – The new Renesas RX210 microcontroller family (32 bit), which embeds PMI peripheral, is very suitable for designing white goods capable to interact with smart

grids without adding any cost to the appliance.


Wr@p Technology main features

The main features of Wr@p technology are the following:

1. No cost for the manufacturer of household appliances, because the communication is managed by the same control system of the appliance, in particular by a Renesas microcontroller (new 32-bit family RX210) with a PMI peripheral on board (Figure 14). Furthermore, after the signature of a free license agreement between Indesit and Renesas (March 29-th, 2010), no royalty is due to Indesit for using Wr@p enabled microcontrollers supplied by Renesas.

2. No need to tie the appliance to a specific network protocol, because the connection to a local network is managed by the “smart adapter”. In other words, the communication node (necessary) is moved from the appliance to the smart adapter, and all the networking issues are managed by such adapter. Therefore, Wr@p technology is virtually compatible with any network protocol.

3. Fully suitable for interacting with a smart grid, because Wr@p technology is able to manage all the necessary information.

4. Capability to easily perform the energy function called “Dynamic Demand Control”, because the same PMI peripheral of Renesas RX210 microcontrollers provides a precise measurement of the mains frequency (Figure 15).

5. Very easy to implement: just use a Renesas microcontroller with PMI peripheral on board (RX210, the new 32-bit family dedicated to “energy-aware” household appliances).

6. Capability to speed up the spread of smart appliances. The availability of a new generation of "smart plugs", which thanks to Wr@p technology are capable to communicate with their electric appliances, allows speeding up the diffusion of smart appliances interacting with the grid.

7. No conflict with a possible “communication node”5 within a Wr@p enabled white good, because the control system of the appliance can easily manage the two different communication channels.

8. Suitable for creating a new generation of “smart plugs & smart sockets”, connectable to any local network and able to directly talk with the related household appliance. Furthermore, Wr@p technology can be easily implemented inside a traditional “smart plug”6 just by adding the proper logic (software) to decode the data sent from the household appliance through the PMI peripheral of Renesas RX210 microcontrollers.

9. The appliance can be remotely assisted without adding any cost to the product. It is possible because the new generation of household appliances based on Renesas 32 bit microcontrollers (RX210 family) can execute complex routines

5 A white goods manufacturer can use Wr@p technology as the basic communication system for the entire production

of digital household appliances, because it doesn’t cost. When it is necessary a higher rate communication (in case of

top class products, for instance), a standard communication node can be added without any problem. 6 To add the "Wr@p technology" to a traditional "smart plug" will need the following two operations: add proper logic

to decode the data sent from the appliance and insert the hardware to send data to the appliance. Adding only the

decoding logic could be enough for performing the "Demand Side Management" function.


for auto-diagnosis and will be potentially able to capture early symptoms of possible faults – with the help of proper sensors - for enabling preventive maintenance services.

10. Possibility to improve and accelerate the in-line test of the appliance, without the need to use expensive and complex tools (Figure 16). In fact, thanks to the “power metering” function of the “smart adapter”, it is possible to send to the appliance, for instance, commands for activating and deactivating each electric load of the appliance sequentially, measuring in the same time its electrical quantities, like the absorbed current and the cosphi (displacement between the mains voltage and the mains current related to the load).

Fig. 14 – Renesas PMI (Power Modulation Interface) peripheral of the RX210 microcontroller family


Fig. 15 – PMI peripheral of Renesas RX210 microcontroller family (32 bit) can also manage DDC (Dynamic Demand Control) function

Fig. 16 – Simplified lay-out of an in-line testing system (very effective, for instance, in the case of refrigerators, but absolutely suitable for any kind of electric

appliance)


Indesit Business Model

Wr@p technology is owned by Indesit Company Spa, which has developed this very simple and cheap communication technology for overcoming the obstacles encountered during its first attempt to produce “smart appliances” for the connected home (see pages 3-9).

Wr@p technology is very useful for creating white goods able to communicate with a local network for properly managing energy consumption - for instance - according to the “smart grid” approach, and also for opening the field of "white goods" to new web based services (remote assistance, preventive maintenance and so on).

Because Wr@p technology uses the same electronic resources already present in a digital appliance, it doesn’t affect its industrial cost and can be easily implemented.

Therefore this technology could be very useful for speeding up the diffusion of "smart appliances" (see pag. 8, “third obstacle”), but, if adopted only by Indesit, it could remain just a proprietary “little garden” without any future.

Fig. 17 – ON/OFF control of household appliances is not allowed

For this reason, Indesit has decided to liberalize7 Wr@p technology by putting it on silicon8 (for guaranteeing repeatability), and by creating a specific peripheral for microcontrollers.

7 No royalties to pay to Indesit Company, owner of Wr@p Technology.


This peripheral – which is called PMI (Power Modulation Interface) - has been implemented by Renesas (Japan) in 2008 and, after signing a "free license agreement" with Indesit (March 2010), this company is planning to use it for a new generation of microcontrollers particularly suitable for developing “energy-aware" appliances.

The business model of Indesit concerning Wr@p technology is very simple and is based on the following two steps (Figure 17):

1. Liberalizing the technology at appliance level (no royalties to pay by the manufacturers of household appliances that want to use “Wr@p enabled” microcontrollers).

2. Licensing of Wr@p technology at “smart adapter” level (this license is offered to any producers of smart plugs and/or smart sockets that want to use this technology).

8 Wr@p technology used at "appliance level" could be implemented also via software. Indesit decided to not permit to

any third parties to implement such technology via software; therefore the free license to Renesas absolutely doesn’t

include this possibility.


CONCLUSION

Wr@p technology, a simple and very cheap communication technology developed by Indesit during the 2000s for overcoming the obstacles encountered previously (second half of the nineties) in attempting to produce “smart appliances” for the connected home, seems to be the right solution for creating white goods able to communicate with a local network for properly managing energy consumption and also for gaining important commercial advantages from new web based services (remote

assistance, preventive maintenance and so on). Therefore Wr@p technology could be very useful for speeding-up the diffusion of "smart appliances" according to the needs of smart grid revolution.

For this reason, Indesit has decided to liberalize Wr@p technology through a new family of microcontrollers, produced by Renesas (Japan), which adopt this technology and are particularly suitable for developing future “energy-aware" appliances.


BIBLIOGRAPHY [1] AIM Project: http://www.ict-aim.eu/ [2] S. Darby: “The effectiveness of

feedback on energy consumption”, University of Oxford, april 2006, http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/smart-metering-report.pdf

[3] ZigBee Alliance: http://www.zigbee.org/

[4] CECED, European Committee of Domestic Equipments Manufacturers: http://www.ceced.org/

[5] EN 50523-1:2009, “Household appliances interworking: Functional specification”: http://shop.bsigroup.com/en/ProductDetail/?pid=000000000030186988

[6] EN 50523-2:2009, “Household appliances interworking: Data structures”: http://shop.bsigroup.com/en/ProductDetail/?pid=000000000030186991

[7] V. Aisa: “Smart grid & Energy@home project: smart appliances and energy management “, Slides 21-32, Home & Building Days - Milano, 18 giugno 2010: http://www.expohb.eu/domotica/pdf2010/Aisa_Indesit.pdf

[8] “ZigBee Smart Energy” Profile: http://www.zigbee.org/Markets/ZigBeeSmartEnergy/Features.aspx

[9] Introduction to “zigbee smart energy” profile (white paper): http://www.jennic.com/files/files/white_papers/JN-WP-7002-Intro-to-Smart-Energy-1v2.pdf

[10] “ZigBee Home Automation” Profile: http://www.zigbee.org/Markets/ZigBeeHomeAutomation/Features.aspx

[11] Stefano Frattesi, interview at Freescale’s event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6gCi4O7TNg

[12] C. Watkins: “Smart Appliances await consumer acceptance”, INFORM review, Vol. 13, Number 3, March 2002, AOCS Press

[13] U. Hansmann, L.Merk, M.S. Nicklous, T. Stober: Book “Pervasive Computing”, § 4.2.3.4 “Real world smart appliances”, pag. 76-77, Springer 2003

[14] V. Aisa, P. Falcioni, P. Pracchi: “Connecting white goods to a home network at a very low cost”, International Appliance Manufacturing review, 2004, pag. 85-91, http://www.domoticainfo.it/atti_convegni/FP_spazi_tecnologici_17_5_04/Merloni/Wrap_IAM_2004.pdf

[15] A. Ricci, V. Aisa, V. Cascio, G. Matrella, P. Ciampolini: “Connecting electrical appliances to a Home Network using low-cost Power-Line Communication”, in Proc. 2005 ISPLC, pp. 300-304.

[16] A. Ricci, V. Aisa, I. De Munari, V. Cascio, P. Ciampolini: “Implementation and Test of a Power-Line based Communication System for Electrical Appliances Networking”, in Proceedings of the 10th ISPLC, Mar. 2006, pp. 239–244.

[17] A. Ricci, V. Aisa, I. De Munari, V. Cascio, P. Ciampolini: “Electrical Appliances Networking: an Ultra-Low Cost Solution based on Power-Line Communication”, 25th ICCE, Jan. 2007.

[18] A. Ricci, B. Vinerba, E. Smargiassi, I. De Munari, V. Aisa, P. Ciampolini: “Power-Grid Load Balancing by Using Smart Home Appliances”, in Digest of Technical Papers International Conference on Consumer Electronics, Jan. 2008, pp. 1–2.

http://www.ict-aim.eu/

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http://www.zigbee.org/Markets/ZigBeeSmartEnergy/Features.aspx

http://www.zigbee.org/Markets/ZigBeeSmartEnergy/Features.aspx

http://www.jennic.com/files/files/white_papers/JN-WP-7002-Intro-to-Smart-Energy-1v2.pdf



http://www.zigbee.org/Markets/ZigBeeHomeAutomation/Features.aspx

http://www.zigbee.org/Markets/ZigBeeHomeAutomation/Features.aspx

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6gCi4O7TNg

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[19] A. Ricci, B. Vinerba, E. Smargiassi, I. De Munari, V. Aisa, P. Ciampolini: “Design and Test of a Microcontroller Peripheral for Grid-Aware Networked Digital Appliances”, Third Workshop on Power Line Communication, October 1-2, 2009, Udine, Italy

[20] V. Aisa: “Smart Plugs: the retrofitting devices for traditional appliances?”, Slides 40-47, Home & Building Days - Milano, 18 giugno 2010, http://www.expohb.eu/domotica/pdf2010/Aisa_Indesit.pdf

[21] Fred. C. Schweppe: “Frequency Adaptive, Power-Energy Re-Scheduler”, US patent N. 4,317,049, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1979

[22] V. Aisa: “Dynamic Demand Control”, Slides 17-20, Home & Building Days - Milano, 18 giugno 2010, http://www.expohb.eu/domotica/pdf2010/Aisa_Indesit.pdf

[23] A. Suardi, S. Frattesi: “Dynamic Ancillary Service Provided By Loads With Inherent Energy Storage”, http://www.gridwiseac.org/pdfs/forum_papers09/howe.pdf

[24] Stefano Frattesi: “World's biggest trial of smart fridges unveiled”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAjEuZcSBGM





http://www.gridwiseac.org/pdfs/forum_papers09/howe.pdf

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAjEuZcSBGM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAjEuZcSBGM

Introduction to wrap technology, a very low cost communication technology for connecting household appliances at zero cost

Technology

objective

power modulation

web based

digital power

smart grid

dynamic demand

produce smart

global energy