iPower: an energy conservation system for intelligent buildings by wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) provide a convenient way to monitor the physical environment. Exploiting the context-aware capability of WSN to achieve energy conservation in intelligent buildings is an attractive direction. We thus propose an iPower (intelligent and personalized energy-conservation system by wireless sensor networks) system which combines WSNs and appliance control devices to provide per-sonalized energy conservation services. A WSN is deployed in each room to monitor the usage of electric appliances and to help determine if there are electric appliances that can be turned off for energy conservation. The iPower system is quite intelligent and can adapt to personal need by automatically adjusting electric appliances to satisfy users ’ requirements. The design and implementation details of iPower are reported in this paper.