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Imagine generating profit from your home heating and air conditioning system. High-efficiency furnaces, ceiling fans and hot water heaters provide essential modern comforts enjoyed by many in the developed world.  Today, people simply pay for gas, oil and electricity based on usage. With the increased emphasis on energy conservation, time-of-use metering has generated better management of our energy resources and more precise measurements of the cost of energy consumption. 

In the near future, your home could be paying you. New research into home power generation and emerging energy-storage inventions will not only make homes more energy self-sufficient (net zero homes), but will also enable them to turn unused energy back into the power grid for general use by others (net profit homes). Ryerson's Centre for Urban Energy is helping homeowners achieve home energy independence.

CUE principal investigator Alan Fung is leading research into the Development of Residential HVAC and Air Conditioning Demand Management and Control Systems, working with professors Xavier Fernando and Janabi-Sharifi. The Toronto Hydro funded research will respond to opportunities for higher performing housing that addresses multiple priorities:

• building codes designed to reduce energy consumption;

• utilities administering time of use (TOU) rates and investing in demand-side management;

• home builders seeking energy saving heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and domestic water heating (DHW) equipment that can contribute to sustainable living; and

• homeowners looking to save on energy costs.

Dr. Fung and the research team will address the missing piece: an energy management device to bridge the gap between informing homeowners about energy consumption and optimizing the complex operation of home equipment. 

Through new combinations of software and hardware, the research will contribute to smarter home energy control systems that customize heat, light, air conditioning and other energy systems to suit individual preferences. In the future, energy and utility suppliers will directly communicate with these smart home systems to determine solutions and incentives that will help to optimize the overall delivery of energy to homes which will help cities manage total energy demand.  By adding other energy generation systems such as wind and solar to individual homes, these smart adaptive control systems could eventually help homes generate and store energy for later use. 

Dr. Fung's research team sees an ideal future that includes a home automatic adaptive control system connected to weather forecasting that shifts energy delivery and consumption to reduce carbon footprint while maximizing homeowner comfort.  Dr. Fung predicts that "ultimately, your home's pre-programmed automatic, adaptive control system will work backstage with the energy supplier system to shift energy demand.  Driven by pricing diversification, rebates for being a 'smart customer' are entirely plausible." In other words, you might sell electricity back to the grid.

Wireless technologies are the key to ensuring energy savings through "smart meters" of the future.  Dr. Fernando predicts: "Once the ability to maximize comfort and energy utilization in individual homes has been achieved, we will be able to adapt the system for use in larger buildings, including condominiums, rental apartments and manufacturing plants."  New wireless sensor systems will also offer important smart grid applications for saving energy through load prediction and protection. New smart grid capacity will address the fact that the average age of Canadian power grid transmission lines is 50-60 years, and while electricity demand grew by 30 per cent between 1988 and 1998, only 15 per cent of new transmission capacity was added.   

The research project is expected to span three years in order to monitor research developments over Canada's four seasons and test multiple types of equipment. The team anticipates securing patents, with intellectual property shared by researchers and investors.