| Energy consumption continues to increase even though natural resources are becoming more and more scarce and expensive. This excessive consumption adversely affects the environmental conditions and the preservation of natural resources. While the exact effects are not precisely known, experts proclaim we are contributing to the climate change of the planet with our excessive consumption of energy resources, such as fossil fuels. Therefore, corrective measures to reduce the consequences of this consumption should be aimed at a substantial reduction and at the optimization of energy consumption. Thus, to facilitate research in the field of energy optimization this thesis deals with developing a microcontroller based Linux platform for measuring and controlling the consumption of electrical energy. Effort has been focused on the control of a home heating system via the Internet and a cellular phone to facilitate the adjustment, the remote access to data stored in a MySQL database and the evaluation of the effectiveness of manual and automatic control methods. This data permitted the modeling of a heating system while taking into consideration the actual environmental conditions such as the temperature and the humidity. This platform can now be used in future research projects to develop new control strategies. The concept of using the Humidex scale in residential heating is also presented in this thesis as a means of reducing energy consumption, while maintaining or even increasing the current comfort level of occupants. |
