In recent years, interest in home energy management systems (HEMS) has grown significantly, as well as the development of Voice Assistants that substantially increase home comfort. This paper presents a novel merging of HEMS with the Assistant paradigm. The combination of both concepts has allowed the creation of a high-performance and easy-to-manage expert system (ES). It has been developed in a framework that includes, on the one hand, the efficient energy management functionality boosted with an Internet of Things (IoT) platform, where artificial intelligence (AI) and big data treatment are blended, and on the other hand, an assistant that interacts both with the user and with the HEMS itself. The creation of this ES has made it possible to optimize consumption levels, improve security, efficiency, comfort, and user experience, as well as home security (presence simulation or security against intruders), automate processes, optimize resources, and provide relevant information to the user facilitating decision making, all based on a multi-objective optimization (MOP) problem model. This paper presents both the scheme and the results obtained, the synergies generated, and the conclusions that can be drawn after 24 months of operation.
Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT); Voice Assistant; artificial intelligence (AI); big data; home energy management systems (HEMS); machine learning (ML).