Of impacts, agents, and functions: An interdisciplinary meta-review of smart home energy management systems research

Abstract

Smart home energy management technologies (SHEMS) have long been viewed as a promising opportunity to manage the way households use energy. Research on this topic has emerged across a variety of disciplines, focusing on different pieces of the SHEMS puzzle without offering a holistic vision of how these technologies and their users will influence home energy use moving forward. This paper presents the results of a systematic, interdisciplinary meta-review of SHEMS literature, assessing the extent to which it discusses the role of various SHEMS components in driving energy benefits. Results reveal a bias towards technical perspectives and controls approaches that seek to drive energy impacts such as load management and energy savings through SHEMS without user or third-party participation. Not only are techno-centric approaches more common, there is also a lack of integration of these approaches with user-centric, information-based solutions for driving energy impacts. These results suggest future work should investigate more holistic solutions for optimal impacts on household energy use. We hope these results will provoke a broader discussion about how to advance research on SHEMS to capitalize on their potential contributions to demand-side management initiatives moving forward.

Smart energy systems beyond the age of COVID-19: Towards a new order of monitoring, disciplining and sanctioning energy behavior?

“…While these cybersecurity concerns may influence individual willingness to connect energy data to a broader network, they hardly restrict the willingness to participate in smart energy systems [ 196 ]. Rather, comparative studies have shown that the smart home applications rely on techno-centric approaches, and the design and construction of the tools is not user-friendly, with a noticeable absence of holistic approaches or applied principles of human–computer interaction (HCI) as found in participatory and collaborative, open-data-based design approaches [ 197 ]. In addition, gender considerations matter in smart energy home solutions, as gender disparities are still the predominant realities of domestic labor [ 198 ].…”

“…We see in this new challenges emerging for post-pandemic energy social research [ [250] , [197] ]. Ways of re-imagining surveillance power [ 251 ] and gender aspects [ [252] , [253] ] have begun to be explored.…”

Smart Homes: How Much Will They Support Us? A Research on Recent Trends and Advances

“…The devices use methods that estimate the values. A comparison of stochastic models was proposed by [101], while the interdisciplinary impact on efficiency in energy management was discussed by [102]. Home healthcare models also were covered in reviews of valuable reviews.…”

“…The review presented in [203] is discussing energy management propositions over the literature. In [102] was presented research on the impacts of smart home energy management on the development in other disciplines. The studies cover also technological advances.…”

Economic evaluation of stochastic home energy management systems in a realistic rolling horizon setting

“…The operation and coordination of these components entails technical difficulties, especially for SHT that depend on manual intervention from end users. This has led to a literature bias towards SHT solutions that require minimal consumer intervention [7].…”