DESIGN OF ENERGY EFFICIENT SMART HOME APPLIANCE TO RUN ON LOW DC VOLTAGE FOR REDUCING POWER CONSUMPTION

Paper in proceeding, 2011

This work investigated on energy efficient home appliance design to run on low DC voltage and the purpose is to reduce energy consumption. The proposed design of home appliances has the possibility to run from renewable sources such as solar cell or the battery storage of wind energy. The stove is one of the high power consuming kitchen appliances and it consumes large amount of energy. This project focuses on an efficient stove design for a low DC voltage supply. To decrease the energy consumption of the stove, the idea is to combine it with the refrigerator. The heat extracted from the refrigerator is stored both in the stove, to be used for cooking and in a water tank to be used for other purposes, for example providing hot water to a dishwasher. Two individual thermoelectric modules (TEM) are used for the refrigerator and the stove. A water tank is used in the middle of the refrigerator and the stove unit. Some parts of the extracted heat from the refrigerator, is stored in paraffin inside the stove and the remaining parts of that extracted heat is stored in the water tank by raising its temperature. The calculated efficiency of the refrigerator unit is 54%, the efficiency for heating up the water by storing the extracted heat is 154% and for storing heat in the paraffin is 134%. This investigation has been filed for patent application.