Smart Home Energy Management

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, smart homes have attracted more interest from the research community. The main reason is that the use of modern automation technology in the home promises considerable savings of energy, therefore, simultaneously reducing the operational costs of the building over its whole lifecycle. However, the full potential of smart homes still lies fallow, due to the complexity and diversity of the systems, as well as the frequent problem of suboptimal control strategies. As a consequence, the energy consumption is still higher than actually necessary and users are unable to yield full comfort in their automated homes. For this reason, new solutions and approaches are needed in order to address the requirements imposed by the smart home energy management systems, through the development of smart solutions, intelligent algorithms and novel network paradigms.

We are inviting submissions to a Special Issue of Energies on the subject area of “Smart Home Energy Management”. A smart home is a residential dwelling, in some cases with a garden or an outdoor space, equipped with sensors and actuators to collect data and send controls according to the activities and expectations of the occupants/users. Home automation provides a centralized or distributed control of electrical appliances. Adding intelligence to the home environment, it would be possible to obtain, not only excellent levels of comfort, but also energy savings both inside the dwelling and also outside, for instance using smart solutions for the management of the external lights and of the garden. This Special Issue solicits the submission of high-quality and unpublished papers that aim to solve open technical problems and challenges typical of smart home energy management systems, integrating novel solutions efficiently, and focusing on performance evaluations and comparisons with existing standards. Both theoretical and experimental studies for typical smart homes scenarios are encouraged. Furthermore, high-quality reviews and survey papers are also welcomed.

Prof. Dr. Giovanni Pau
Prof. Dr. Mario Collotta
Prof. Dr. Antonio Ruano
Prof. Dr. Jiahu Qin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.