Energies, Vol. 18, Pages 6397: Artificial Intelligence-Driven User Interaction with Smart Homes: Architecture Proposal and Case Study
Energies doi: 10.3390/en18246397
Authors:
João Lemos
João Ramos
Mário Gomes
Paulo Coelho
The evolution of Smart Grids enabled the deployment of intelligent and decentralized energy management solutions at the residential level. This work presents a comprehensive Smart Home architecture that integrates real-time energy monitoring, appliance-level consumption analysis, and environmental data acquisition using smart metering technologies and distributed IoT sensors. All collected data are structured into a scalable infrastructure that supports advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods, including Large Language Models (LLMs) and machine learning, enabling predictive analysis, personalized energy recommendations, and natural language interaction. Proposed architecture is experimentally validated through a case study on a domestic refrigerator. Two series of tests were conducted. In the first phase, extreme usage scenarios were evaluated: one with intensive usage and another with highly restricted usage. In the second phase, normal usage scenarios were tested without AI feedback and with AI recommendations following them whenever possible. Under the extreme scenarios, AI-assisted interaction resulted in a reduction in daily energy consumption of about 81.4%. In the normal usage scenarios, AI assistance resulted in a reduction of around 13.6%. These results confirm that integrating AI-driven behavioral optimization within Smart Home environments significantly improves energy efficiency, reduces electrical stress, and promotes more sustainable energy usage.