This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TCE.2019.2962605, IEEE
Transactions on Consumer Electronics
‘Smart’ Is Not Free: Energy Consumption of
Consumer Home Automation Systems
Chrispin Gray, Member, IEEE, Robert Ayre, Kerry Hinton, and Leith Campbell, Member, IEEE,
Abstract—The proliferation of consumer Home Automation
Systems (HAS), which is increasingly based on the Internet
of Things (IoT) architecture, comes with added costs for the
additional electrical energy required to power the automation
interfaces and the standby energy consumption required to
maintain connectivity and/or “smartness”. In this paper, we
use a bottom-up approach to develop novel system-level energy
consumption models for consumer HAS devices and quantify
the energy consumption for a typical HAS. We then assess the
potential impact on global Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) energy use. We show that, on average, HAS
may consume over one-third of the annual energy used in a mid-
sized home, with non-trivial impact on the global ICT energy
footprint.
Index Terms—Energy consumption; power models; smart
home; home automation; Internet of Things (IoT).
I. I NTRODUCTION
Home Automation System (HAS), which consists of
A sensors and actuators and the network that connects
them, basically enables a “Smart Home”, which will also in-
clude consumer “smart” devices like TV sets and refrigerators.
Here, we focus just on the HAS itself. A recent report
estimates that home automation would make up nearly 50%
of all Internet of Things (IoT) devices by 2020 [1]. While
the deployment of billions of devices through IoT services
could offer many benefits, it comes with the need for additional
electrical energy.
Research work in the area of consumer HAS energy
consumption has, for the most part, been focused on the
monitoring, design and development of Smart Home Energy
Management Systems (SHEMS) using a number of wire-
less network technology options (e.g. Bluetooth Low Energy
(BLE), ZigBee, Wi-Fi), while few have focused on developing
and optimising energy consumption models for HAS. Han and
Lim [2] proposed a context-aware SHEMS, using a ZigBee
sensor network, with a new on-demand routing protocol.
Manuscripts received August 2, 2019. This work was supported by Alcatel-
Lucent Bell Labs, The State Government of Victoria, Australia, and The
University of Melbourne.
Chrispin Gray is with Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineer-
ing, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia (e-mail:
chrispin.gray@unimelb.edu.au)
Robert Ayre is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engi-
neering, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia (e-mail:
rayre@unimelb.edu.au)
Kerry Hinton is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engi-
neering, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia (e-mail:
k.hinton@unimelb.edu.au)
Leith Campbell is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engi-
neering, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia (e-mail:
leith.campbell@unimelb.edu.au)
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1
The system aims to automate consumer device control while
providing timely energy usage data to consumers. Han et al.
[3] proposed a ZigBee and PLC-based SHEMS. Their system
simultaneously monitors energy consumption and renewable
energy generation to automatically schedule device usage,
using a home server, with the goal of cost minimisation. Chen
and Lin [4] employed smart plugs to monitor appliance (non-
smart) load characteristics and applied analytics to determine
power-down opportunities to minimise energy usage. A study
by Friedli et. al. [5] for the International Energy Agency
(IEA) estimated the global energy consumption of selected
IoT use-case applications using a combination of measurement
and publicly available manufacturer datasheets. Mehdi and
Roshchin [6] studied different home electric appliances based
on their load characteristics. By applying task-scheduling
techniques, Mehdi and Roshchin presented models that are
optimised to minimise energy consumption. Langhammer and
Kays [7] presented energy models for HAS networks and
proposed a performance evaluation metric for a host of indoor,
HAS-enabling wireless network technologies, including BLE,
KNX-RF and IEEE 802.15.4 variants. In both [6] and [7],
however, critical enabling devices like the gateways are not
considered. The authors of this paper have further studied and
compared the power consumption design characteristics of five
commonly employed wireless technology options for HAS,
including BLE, ZigBee and Wi-Fi as detailed in [8].
In this paper, we estimate the energy consumption of
consumer HAS from the household to global level, using a
bottom-up approach. We use a combination of direct measure-
ment and modelling to estimate energy consumption of each
component of a typical modern consumer HAS in the context
of the IoT. We then estimate the global energy impact of
these systems if current IoT device installation projections [1],
[5] come to pass. Modern consumer HAS services generally
include novel, network-enabled IoT devices, a gateway device
and an attached cloud service. Hence, traditional network-
enabled devices like Smart TVs and home entertainment
systems are not included. For smart consumer appliances,
only the added IoT module (e.g. sensor and communication
modules) is considered.
The paper is organised as follows. The network architecture
of a consumer HAS is described in Section II and the device
measurements described in Section III. Simplified energy mod-
els are detailed in Section IV, with network traffic measure-
ments from an example HAS application given in Section V.
The energy consumption estimates for an average household
fitted with a fully-equipped HAS are given in Section VI.
Published deployment scenarios are used to estimate the
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Home
Smart Hub
xDSL, PON,
HFC
IoT Gateway
Home Gateway
IoT Devices
PC, Laptop, Smartphone
Wi-Fi
Fig. 1. Simple diagram of a home automation system supported by a cloud
service that is hosted at a data centre.
energy consumption of these systems in the top two markets in
Section VII, and for a global scale in Section VIII. Section IX
discusses possible options for mitigating the significant energy
consumption increment.
II. N ETWORK A RCHITECTURE OF C ONSUMER H OME
AUTOMATION S YSTEMS
Figure 1 shows a simplified network architecture of a
consumer HAS linked to a cloud computing service.
The HAS architecture includes: end-devices (IoT devices) at
the customer premises; an IoT gateway (IGW), which essen-
tially is an aggregator for IoT devices and provides application
management and control capabilities; a home gateway/modem
(HGW) for access to the Internet, and data centres hosting
cloud services. In operation, the IGW and IoT devices form a
local network referred to as an IoT Device Network (IDN).
In a “typical” consumer HAS installation, the IGW connects
to the HGW either via Ethernet or Wi-Fi access [9]. A recent
popular addition to the consumer home automation eco-system
is the voice-activated Smart Hub.
A. Defining IoT Devices
The range of IoT devices in a HAS can be broadly
categorised as “sensors” or “actuators”, the latter including
controlled devices. In either case, the devices include a number
of functional elements, as shown in Fig. 2. These elements
include a sensor or an actuator unit (SAU), a microcontroller
unit (MCU), and a radio interface module. Although shown as
discrete elements, it is more common today for these functions
(apart from the SAU transducers) to be integrated as a System-
on-a-Chip. A brief description of the workflow processes of
sensor/actuator devices is given below.
1) Sensor Device: In a sensor device, some physical param-
eter is initially measured by an appropriate transducer, and
the result passed to the MCU. The latter performs analog-
digital conversion, may undertake some simple processing, and
prepares the measurement data for transmission by the radio
module to the IoT Gateway.
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Transactions on Consumer Electronics
2
To
IoT Gateway
Power
(Mains / Battery)
(Communication Module)
Memory
(e.g. SRAM)
UART
Microcontroller
Radio
SPI, I2C
(MCU)
ADC DAC
Internet
Sensor or Actuator
Unit (SAU)
Sensor Actuator
Data Centres
IoT Device
Acquisition Actuation
(External Physical Quantity)
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of a generic IoT device.
2) Actuator Device: Conversely, an actuator device initially
receives a signal via its radio interface. This is interpreted by
the MCU, which in turn issues a command to the physical
actuator element.
Each of these processes of sensing, processing, and com-
munication consumes some energy, often operating many
times per day. Some devices operate autonomously, so that,
for example, the sense-process-communicate sequence repeats
periodically. These are referred to as time-based devices.
Others, labelled event-driven, operate when triggered by an
external event (e.g. a button press, door opening). In the
intervals between operations, the device continues to consume
a (smaller) idle power. Further, the HAS may employ protocols
that impose additional requirements (e.g. connectivity moni-
toring, “keep alive”) which in turn add to energy consumption.
B. IoT Device Network
The IDN refers to a network of IoT devices within a
consumer HAS with a common gateway (i.e. the IGW). The
smart hub is an extension of the IGW for voice commands.
In its most common form, communication between the IoT
devices and IGW is via a wireless link. A range of short-
range wireless network protocols is used in HAS, including
Bluetooth (Classic and Smart/Low-Energy), ZigBee, Wi-Fi
and RF 433 MHz [8]. While many of these protocols are
designed for point-to-point communication, employing a star
topology, a few can operate in a mesh topology (e.g. BLE,
ZigBee) forming a daisy chain of links towards the gateway.
A basic point-to-point single-hop, star-topology connection
between the IoT devices and the IGW is modelled here.
III. E NERGY M EASUREMENT OF I OT D EVICES
We have conducted measurements on a range of IoT devices
and report examples here. These will be used in Section IV to
create more generic power consumption models for the HAS.
A. Measurement Method and Setup
For a number of IoT devices proposed for home use, we
have studied their characteristics, including the device’s bit
rate, transmit sequence, protocol stack, energy consumption
states (e.g. active, idle, standby) and trigger mechanisms.
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Transactions on Consumer Electronics
3

0 60 120 180 240

80 80
100

Power Consumption (mW)

Power Consumption (mW)
70
60 Tx 100

Power Consumption (mW)

Power Consumption (mW)
70 50 70 90 90 tTx
40 80

60 30 PTx 60 80 70
20 PMCU 60
50
70
50
10
0
MCU 50
40
30
tMCU PTx
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 60 20
Time (ms) 10
40 40 50 0
126.2 126.5 126.8 127.1 127.4 127.7

Power Consumption (mW)

3
Sensing 40 PMCU
30 2
30 Time (sec)

PSEN 30
20 1 20
0 20
10 0 20 40
Time (ms)
60 80 100 120 10
10
0 0 0
0 60 120 180 240 50 100 150 200 250 300
Time (sec) Time (sec)
(a) (b)

300 300

Power Consumption (mW)

Power Consumption (mW)

300

Power Consumption (mW)

300
Event
Power Consumption (mW)

250 Transmit 250 Tx

Event
200
250 150 250 200

100 150
50
100
0
200 49.2 49.4 49.6 49.8
Time (sec)
50 50.2 200 50

0
5200 5400 5600 5800 6000 6200

150 150 PMCU Time (ms)

50 51 52 53 54 55
1.0 1
Power Consumption (mW)

0.8 Lockout Time 0.9

0.8
0.7
100 0.6 0.6
100
PTx
0.5
0.4 0.4
0.3
0.2 0.2
0.1
0.0
50
0
50 51 52 53
Time (sec)
54 55 50 Sensing

0 0
35 40 45 50 55 60 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Time (sec) Time (sec)
(c) (d)
Fig. 3. Power consumption measurement of 433 MHz sensor devices. (a) Type I temperature and humidity (T&H) sensor device, acquiring data samples
(small spikes) every 7−8 s and transmitting (large spike) said data once per minute; (b) Type II T&H sensor device transmitting collected data once per
minute. (c) Passive Infrared (PIR) sensor device triggered at 5 s intervals; (d) a reed switch-based door/window sensor device triggered at 3 s intervals.
Power consumption measurements have been made in each is limited to 1 second sampling rate. A representative off-
phase of the device operation cycle and averaged over at the-shelf consumer HAS is used as our testbed (referred to
least 10 iterations. We used custom-built USB 3V, 5V and as Test-HAS). The Test-HAS consists of wireless sensors,
TABLE I actuators and cameras (i.e. IoT devices), a gateway unit (i.e.
M EASUREMENT OF A T IME -BASED T&H S ENSOR OVER 1 C YCLE (1 IoT gateway) and a cloud service hosted at a data centre,
MINUTE )
through which control and management of all connected IoT
devices and their data are achieved.
Instance Duration Power Energy
Phase Wireless communication between end-devices and the Test-
(N ) (ms) (mW) (mJ)
Sensing (SEN) 16 82 0.87 1.1 HAS gateway is via the ISM band 433 MHz connectionless
Transmit (Tx) 3 72 21.95 4.6 RF protocol (cf. Fig. 1).
Processing (MCU) 1 500 11.20 5.6
Standby (SBY) - 60 s 0.06 3.6
B. Sensor Devices
TABLE II
M EASUREMENT OF E VENT-D RIVEN S ENSOR D EVICES
Figure 3 shows power consumption traces for 433 MHz
time-based and event-driven sensor devices. Shown in Fig. 3a
PIR Sensor Door/Window Sensor is a Type I temperature and humidity sensor (T&H) collecting
Duration Power Duration Power samples at regular intervals (≈7−8 s) followed by 3 transmit
Phase (ms) (mW) (ms) (mW)
Sensing (SEN) - n/a - 0.07 bursts (extra 2 for redundancy) of a 5-Byte data packet within
Transmit (Tx) 870 146.9 630 86.2 a 60 s cycle. The average power and duration of each phase
Processing (MCU) 3650* 0.5 850 9.8 is given in Table I. A similar T&H device trace (Type II)
* Lockout time set to 5 s, which includes the duration for data Tx. in Fig. 3b shows non-distinct data sampling spikes but with
9V DC power meters, each with sampling rate of 5 ms (re- one continuous transmit burst, also within a 60 s cycle.
programmed to 1 ms for some tests) and accuracy of 10 or The repetitive behaviour of time-based sensors makes for a
100 µW. For AC mains power measurements, an AC power simple energy consumption estimate. From Table I, the energy
meter was employed, which provides a 10 mW accuracy but consumption of Type I is ≈15 mJ per cycle or ≈22 J per day.

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Transactions on Consumer Electronics
4

PDEV Standby (SBY) PDEV Standby (SBY)

Sensing (SEN)
PDEV Actuate (ACT)
Event Processing (MCU)
Processing (MCU)
Communications (COM) 1 Cycle (TC) NR Standby (SBY) Communications (COM)
tCOM Sensing (SEN)
tCOM NR Listening Event Listening
Processing (MCU)
Trigger Communications (COM) tACT
PCOM Command
tSEN PCOM PMCU PMCU PACT
tSEN tCOM
NSEN
PMCU PSEN
PSBY PSBY PSBY
0 0 0
tMCU PSEN tMCU t PCOM tMCU t
t
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 4. Power consumption time evolution model as a generalization of IoT device power measurements. In the figure, tSEN and tACT are the duration of the
sensing and actuating phases, tMCU is that for analyzing or interpreting sample data/commands, and tCOM , the time for Tx & Rx with NR retransmissions; (a)
A time-based sensor device acquires and transmits NSEN samples; (b) An event-driven sensor device reacts to an externally observed phenomenon (trigger);
(c) An actuator device responding to a received command via its radio in “listening mode” with the receiver always-on.
Traces for two event-driven sensor devices, a Passive In- The total energy consumption of the IoT devices in a HAS,
frared (PIR) and a Door/Window (DW) sensor device, are EIoT , is the sum of the energy consumed by each individual
given in Fig. 3c and Fig. 3d, respectively, with their measured IoT device i, such that:
values reported in Table II. Both devices transmit multiple N
bursts of a predefined 4-Byte data block when triggered. The
X
EIoT = EDEVi (2)
PIR prevents excessive re-triggering for the same event by i=1
employing a selectable lockout timer. Fig. 3c shows the power
for i = 1, 2,..., N , where N = number of devices in IDN.
trace for a 5 s lockout time. With the sensor of the PIR being
passive, negligible power dissipation was observed during the
sensing phase. We can then calculate the energy consumption B. IoT Device Energy Modelling
of the PIR and DW as 130 mJ and 63 mJ per event or 12 J Typically, a device operation includes a sequence of tasks
and 13 J for 100 events per day, respectively. Similar mains- that consume similar amounts of energy at each instance [10],
powered sensor devices were reported in [5] to consume about [11]. The factors that influence its energy consumption include
0.6 W on average. the volume of data transmitted, the type of wireless technology
and protocol used, the volume of data processing involved
C. Actuator Devices and any redundancy mechanisms [10]–[12]. To model an IoT
Four 230V controlled mains-power sockets were used as device, considering Fig. 2, the total power consumed PDEV (t)
examples of an actuator device. The controlled socket contains at time t can be characterised by the power consumed by its
a 433 MHz RF wireless receiver that receives commands from individual elements and their processes:
the gateway to open or close the power circuit. We recorded its
PDEV (t) = PSAU (t) + PMCU (t) + PCOM (t) + PSBY (3)
no-load average power consumption as 0.70 W in its “Socket
OFF” state and 0.67 W in the “Socket ON” state. On average, such that PSBY is the power dissipated when the device
similar mains-powered actuator devices have been reported to is in a standby or inactive state, PSAU (t), PMCU (t) and
consume about 1 W [5]. PCOM (t) represent the additional power consumed by the
sensor/actuator unit, the micro-controller unit and its interfaces
D. IP Camera in handling sample data or commands, and the radio for data
In the Test-HAS, an example IP camera (IPcam) was used communication with the gateway, respectively.
as an IoT device for video surveillance, configured to provide
a high definition image of 1280x720 pixels at 25 frames/s. The C. Modelling Sensor Device Energy
IPcam connects via Wi-Fi to the HGW. It consumed 3.75 W 1) Time-based Sensor Device: Figure 4 depicts the time
when streaming captured frames with a bit rate of 1.9 Mb/s. evolution of the power consumption of sensor and actuator
devices, as a generalisation of the examples in Fig. 3. For
IV. E NERGY M ODELLING the time-based devices, depicted in Fig. 4a, in addition to the
A. Home Automation System Energy Model three main tasks of sensing, processing, and communication,
The total Home Automation System energy consumption there are certain basic tasks running continuously, and lead
can be subdivided into 4 segments, modelled separately: (i) to the standby power consumption PSBY . For a given sensor
the energy consumed by the IoT devices, EIoT ; (ii) the IoT device, the energy consumed for a given task is the same in
gateway energy, EIGW ; (iii) the home gateway modem energy, each operational cycle. From (3), the energy consumption of
EHGW ; and, when available, (iv) the energy consumed by the a time-based sensor device, for 1 operational cycle in time Tc ,
Smart Hub, EHUB . The total energy consumption of a HAS is therefore given by:
over a diurnal cycle (time T = 24 hours) is: (m)
EDEVC = NSEN ESEN +NMCU EMCU +NCOM (NR ECOM )+ESBYC
EHAS = EIoT + EIGW + EHUB + EHGW (1) (4)

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Transactions on Consumer Electronics
where NSEN is the number of samples collected, NMCU and
NCOM are the number of processing and transmission in-
stances, NR is the number of message retransmissions, for
NR > 1 and ESBYc = PSBY × Tc (see Fig. 4). The total energy
consumption can then be calculated for Nc cycles of operation
over time T (e.g. Nc = 1440 for T = 24 hrs).
2) Event-Driven Sensor: An event-driven sensor device is
depicted in Fig. 4b, which similarly performs 3 main tasks
but at irregular intervals in response to a detected external
trigger. The sensing task (tSEN ) runs continuously, so that
PSEN and PSBY are indistinguishable. Alternatively, for some
other event-driven sensor devices, the sensing task may be
a continuous low-level communication process (i.e. a radio
receiver in listening mode) that receives a trigger event from
its parent gateway. The sensing task can be active with low
power draw or passive with negligible power draw.
To model an event-driven sensor, consider a device having
NE events detected in a total operating time T . In general,
the energy consumed over time T is as given in (5) but,
depending on the device, ESEN may be approximately equal
to ECOM . Assuming the events are repetitive with a similar
amount of data transmitted during each operation, the total
energy consumption of an event-driven sensor device over time
T is:
(e)  
EDEV ≈ ESEN + NE (T ) EMCU + NR ECOM (5)
for NE > 0 and NR > 1, where ESEN = PSEN T .
D. Modelling Actuator Device Energy
In general, the operation of an actuator contains a pe-
riod of communication, a period of processing followed by
the excitation of the actuating unit. More advanced devices
may also include status reporting, ACK and ”keep-alive”
functions. Fig. 4c shows a conceptual model for the power
consumption of an actuator device: such as the AC actuator
devices measured in Section III. A command received by the
radio incurs a power draw PCOM during time tCOM and is
processed by the MCU with power PMCU over time tMCU ,
which in turn triggers the actuator with power PACT for a
period tACT . For NE events triggered during an operating time
T , each leading to a processing event and an actuation event,
NMCU = NACT = NE , where NACT is the number of times
the actuator unit is energised. We further assume that, in most
cases, PCOM = PSBY or alternatively, PCOM  PSBY such that
PCOM + PSBY ≈ PCOM . Thus, the total energy consumption of
an actuator device for a period T is given by:
(a)  
EDEV ≈ ECOM + NE (T ) EMCU + EACT (6)
where NE > 0 and ECOM = PCOM T .
E. Modelling Smart Consumer Appliances
Smart consumer appliances include intelligence and network
connectivity (mostly wireless) to control, actuate, report or
manage their internal functions. These appliances are largely
tethered to mains power, with their radio modules consuming
a constant standby/idle power; the energy consumed can
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5
be significant [5]. For these consumer appliances, only the
additional energy required to maintain the network-enabled
communication module is considered. We used manufacturers’
datasheet values for communication modules, as well as re-
ported measurements in the literature.
F. Modelling an IoT Gateway and Smart Hub
The measured power consumption profile of many network
elements (NE), like the IoT gateway, can be modelled by two
components; a component linearly dependent on the device
workload, rising above a constant base power consumption
(second component), as in [13]. However, the power con-
sumption is in many cases almost constant with load. In [14],
for example, a mini PC had a power variation of < 5%
(70 mW from 2 W idle power) for a load up to 90 Mb/s.
Our measurement of a different mini PC showed similar
results. Thus, we take the energy consumption of an IGW
over time T (diurnal cycle) to be based on constant power:
EIGW = Pidle × T . For a Smart Hub, we also consider only its
idle power, 3 W.
G. Modelling a Home Gateway Modem
The HGW is dedicated to a single customer’s Internet
service, with traffic from multiple end-user services [15]. To
account for all services gaining network access, a shared
power model [15] is adopted. This model allocates to each
service a fraction of the no-load/idle power, which is in
proportion to the service’s contribution to the total traffic. This
is in addition to the incremental power consumption for the
service, which is a function of the service’s data rate. The
combined power consumption P (R) for a service with data
rate R has the form:
!
Pidle Pmax − Pidle
P (R) = + R (7)
ρRmax Rmax
where Pidle and Pmax are the no-load and maximum load power
consumption of the shared HGW, Rmax its maximum data rate
and ρ is the utilisation such that 0 < ρ 6 1.
As with the IGW, the power consumption of our example
HGW (an ADSL2+ wireless modem) was found to be largely
independent of traffic load, up to the maximum rate on the
test line, 10 Mb/s. An incremental power consumption of only
≈4% was observed; specifically, an increase of 300 mW from
an idle power of 7 W. We therefore neglect the load-dependent
term in (7) and focus on the allocation of the idle power
between IoT and other traffic.
In (7), the term ρRmax represents the load on the gateway
(e.g. a 1 Gb/s router with a utilisation of 0.5 has a load =
500 Mb/s). It comprises the load due to background traffic,
Rbgd , and the load due to the IoT traffic, RIoT . For the IoT,
then, (7) can be simplified to:
 
Pidle
P (RIoT ) ≈ RIoT (8)
Rbgd + RIoT
The background traffic varies by time of day. To estimate the
background traffic of a single-household, we obtained diurnal
traffic statistics for a tier-2 ISP with a predominantly retail
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Transactions on Consumer Electronics
6

180%
ISP Traffic Profile
160% Load Level
Relative Load Level (μl)

140%
120%
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
Time of day (Hours)

Fig. 5. Average diurnal traffic profile of a tier-2 ISP network with step load
levels, which are percentages of the average load over a day.
TABLE III
D IURNAL T RAFFIC L OAD L EVELS FOR A T IER -2 ISP. T HE H OURLY
AVERAGE DATA R ATES FOR THE HGW ARE C ALCULATED U SING ITS
E STIMATED AVERAGE DAILY T RAFFIC AND L OAD L EVELS (µl ).
Fig. 6. Power consumption of HGW attributable to the NB traffic as a function
of its data rate for 6 different background traffic levels profiles.
TABLE IV
AVERAGE DATA R ATE AND P OWER C ONSUMPTION OF THE G ATEWAY.

Traffic Profile Image Data Rate (kb/s) Power

Load Level Duration Hourly
l Resolution
(µl ) (Tl ) Rate in
1 40% 2h
2 50% 4h
3 90% 4h
4 110% 8h
5 140% 4h
6 160% 2h
customer base, over 1 week in May 2017 [16]. This traffic
over time, relative to the daily average, is used as a proxy
for the diurnal traffic variation of an “average” customer as
given in Fig. 5. The data is quantised into 2-hour time blocks
(dash lines), and into one of six relative traffic levels, as
listed in Table III. These relative load levels are used as an
approximation of a single-household hourly background data
rate (Rbgd ) relative to the household’s average daily data rate.
From Australian Bureau of Statistics, the average data
volume usage of all Australian fixed-line households was
168 GB per month (assuming 10% upload volume) for the last
quarter of 2017, and is doubling every 2 years [17]. Hence, we
assume a household monthly data usage of 400 GB for early
2019. For this usage volume, the calculated daily average data
rate is 1.22 Mb/s (for 13.2 GB daily usage and 30.4 days per
calendar month). Based on this daily usage and the diurnal
cycle, the hourly average data rate for background traffic is
given in Table III. From (8), we can then calculate the hourly
average power consumption of the HGW attributable to the
IoT, for a range of RIoT data rates, as plotted in Fig. 6.
V. T RAFFIC M EASUREMENT – T HE T EST-HAS C ASE
S TUDY
The Test-HAS gateway consists of a mini PC main pro-
cessor and a microcomputer daughter-board as a unit. The
gateway was set up with 3 T&H sensors, 2 PIR sensors, a
wireless electronic button (like a door bell), and 3 controlled
socket actuators. (Cameras were added later.) Using the packet
sniffing application “Wireshark” and the power meter, the
Average Data
Attached Devices
DS US (Watts)
Mb/s Rbgdl Sensors & Actuators - 2 5 2
0.49 IP Camera (HD) 1280 x 720 13 216 2
0.61 Webcam (SD) 640 x 480 17 126 3.4*
1.10 * Difference of 1.4 W due to the bus-powered USB webcam.
1.35
1.71 traffic generated by the Test-HAS gateway and its power
1.96
draw were observed and recorded, as shown in Table IV.
The Test-HAS gateway consumes 1.2 W when powered via
a 5V USB 2.0 port or 2 W when the unit is mains-powered.
The upstream (US) and downstream (DS) traffic were low
when only sensors and actuators were connected. Unlike more
recent multi-function HASs with in-built video streaming, the
Test-HAS is limited to an image streaming application, which
transmits still images from the camera to its cloud servers at
3 s intervals. The average DS and US data rates when the
Test-HAS gateway is individually connected to two different
cameras are given in Table IV. We can thus deduce that the
traffic generated by the cameras alone is about 20−33 times
more than that of other devices combined.
VI. E STIMATING THE E NERGY I MPACT OF C ONSUMER
HAS ON H OMES
As an illustrative example of the additional energy cost
of a consumer HAS, we assume a simple consumer HAS
installation in a home. Consider a mid-size 3-bedroom double-
storey suburban home fitted with a whole-home consumer
HAS as given in Table V. There may be 200 connectable
devices per person or more than 50 connected devices per
household by 2020 [18]. Thus, the system consists of a
plethora of IoT devices, including smart light bulbs, smart ap-
pliances, controlled socket actuators, surveillance cameras,an
IoT gateway, a smart hub and a HGW. For smart light bulbs,
the average number of lamps per household is 24 in EU [19],
36.6 in Australia [20] and 67.4 in the US [21]. We assume 40
smart light bulbs for a mid-size home. A first-generation LED
light bulb (Wi-Fi−enabled) may consume 2 W in standby.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TCE.2019.2962605, IEEE
Transactions on Consumer Electronics
7

TABLE V TABLE VI
E NERGY C ONSUMPTION OF D EVICES IN A M ULTI -F UNCTION HAS. E STIMATED N UMBER OF S MART H OMES UP TO 2025.

No. of Events Power Energy Smart Homes (millions)

IoT Device Region
Units /day (W) /day (kJ) 2015 2020 2025
T&H Sensor 6 1440 - 0.13 North America 12.7 46.2 92
Door Sensor 3 10 - 0.02 Europe (EU28+2) 5.3 44.9 146
Window Sensor 20 2 - 0.12
PIR/Motion Sensor 12 288 - 0.98 TABLE VII
Smoke Detector 2 - 1 172.8 D EPLOYMENT S CENARIOS OF C ONSUMER HAS IN S MART H OMES .
Door Lock Actuator 3 - 1 259.2
Controlled Socket Actuator 15 - 1 1296.0 Devices Large Medium Small
Garage Door Actuator 1 - 1 86.4 Sensors 43 25 10
Smart Light Bulb 40 - 2 6912.0 Actuators 19 10 4
Smart Appliance 16 - 1 1382.4 Smart Light Bulb 40 20 5
Surveillance Camera 4 - 3.75 1296.0 Smart Appliance 16 6 3
IoT Gateway 1 - 2 172.8 IP Camera 4 2 1
Smart Hub 1 - 3 259.2 IoT Gateway 1 1 1
Home Gateway Modem 1 - 7 268.1* Smart Hub 1 1 1
Home Gateway Modem 1 1 1
*This value represents a share of the daily energy consumption of the HGW
allocated to the HAS as a fraction of its average data rate, calculated using
(8). with smartphone apps or web portal as a user interface; thus,
the report does not include legacy systems. The report further
1% 2% 2% focuses on 2 major markets (North America (NA) and Europe
Energy Consumption (kWh)

800
700
Sensors
9% 17%
600 (EU28+2)) with forecasts up to 2020, given in Table VI. The
Actuators 500

9% Smart Light Bulbs
12% Smart Appliances
IP Camera
IoT Gateway
48%
Smart Hub
Home Gateway
(a)
Fig. 7. Annual energy consumption of a mains-powered devices in a simple
HAS. (a) Percentage share by device type. (b) Energy consumption in kWh.
Consumer smart appliances are assumed to be designed with
802.11n Wi-Fi modules with an idle power of ≈1 W [22],
including power supply inefficiencies.
The annual energy consumption in kWh is expressed as:
! this adoption pattern, we consider three deployment scenarios
365 × daily energy (kJ)
Annual Energy (kWh) = (9)
3600
From (9), we calculate the annual additional energy con-
sumption of a HAS installed at a mid-size suburban home
to be about 1232−1460 kWh (depending on whether or not
the sensors are mains-powered). To put this in perspective,
the current annual energy use of a similarly sized house in
Victoria, Australia is reported as approximately 4067 kWh
[23]. Thus a whole-home HAS would add approximately
30−36% to the annual household electricity consumption.
The contribution from each device type is given in Fig. 7a
and Fig. 7b. Smart light bulbs consume nearly 50% of the
total additional energy, with sensors being the next major
contributor at nearly a fifth of the total.
VII. E STIMATING THE E NERGY C ONSUMPTION OF S MART
H OMES IN S ELECTED M AJOR M ARKETS
In this section, we broaden the model to include a spread of
smart home installation types. We estimate the future energy
consumption of Smart Homes based on their installed base and
market forecast. As stated earlier, we consider a “Smart Home”
in this context as having a fully-equipped consumer HAS but
we do not include traditional appliances like PCs and TV
sets. A market-based report in [24] focuses on Smart Homes
400 projections of the numbers of equipped households in [24] end
300
200 in 2020. We have extrapolated the forecast to 2025, but used
100
0 half of the quoted CAGR: the projected proportion of equipped
households would have exceeded 100% at the quoted CAGR
on the extended period. The modified 10-year forecast has an
(b) effective CAGR of ≈22% and ≈39% for NA and EU28+2,
respectively.
To estimate the Smart Home energy impact, an estimate of
the number of devices per household is required. The above
Smart Home report indicated that between 12−17% of the
2015 installed Smart Home systems were multi-function sys-
tems, while the remainder were function-specific. To cater for
(large, medium and small), as given in Table VII. The large-
scale deployment is effectively a multi-function, whole-home
system similar to that in Table V. A small-scale deployment
refers to point solutions, as described in [24], while a medium-
scale is a nearly mid-point between the other two. Using
values from Table V and deployment estimates in Table VII,
the energy consumption of large-, medium-, and small-scale
systems is calculated to be 1460 kWh, 756 kWh, and 289
kWh, respectively.
Assuming a distribution of 20% of homes with large-
scale systems, 40% with medium-scale systems and 40% with
small scale systems, together with Smart Home forecasts in
Table VI, the estimated total energy consumption for Smart
Homes in NA and EU28+2 is given in Fig. 8. The figure
foreshadows an increase from about 9 TWh in 2015 to 65 TWh
in 2025 for NA, and from 4 TWh to 104 TWh in EU28+2 over
the decade, assuming the installation rates are maintained.
To put this in perspective, about 9 large, ∼2 GW power
plants will be required to support Smart Homes, in just the
two regions considered.
VIII. E STIMATING THE G LOBAL E NERGY I MPACT OF HAS
D EVICES
Whilst the report in [24] discussed numbers of HAS-
equipped dwellings, two other reports [1], [5] have discussed

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Transactions on Consumer Electronics
8

20152016201720182019202020212022202320242025
120 120.00
numbers of HAS devices. Whilst the number of dwellings will
North America be moderated by population growth, the number of devices
Energy Consumption (TWh)

100
EU28+2 may follow a different trajectory. Global forecasts of IoT
100.00
device deployments tend to be coarse with very wide variations
[1], [5], [18].
80 80.00To estimate the energy impact of HAS deployment from
a device-count perspective, market forecasts up to 2020 from
60 two different organisations were used. Forecast 1 (used by IEA
60.00
in [5]) and Forecast 2 in [1] are given in Table VIII. Forecast 1
can be considered more conservative than Forecast 2, which
40 40.00
is a potential worst-case scenario or upper bound.
To estimate the global energy impact over a longer time
20 20.00
span, we extrapolated both forecasts to 2025, assuming their
respective CAGR, giving a 10-year projection. Applying the
0 values in Table V, for all mains-powered devices, with the
0.00
same 20/40/40 distribution of device installations as given in
the previous section, we estimate the global energy consump-
tion for HAS to rise from 8 TWh in 2015 to 58 TWh in 2025
Fig. 8. Annual energy consumption estimate for smart home systems in NA
and EU28+2. for the Forecast 1 projection or from 27 TWh to 157 TWh
TABLE VIII for the Forecast 2 projection. The disparity is considerable as
HAS D EVICE D EPLOYMENT E STIMATE UP TO 2025. the Forecast 2 projection is nearly 3-fold higher than that of
Forecast 1, which further shows the coarse nature of today’s
HAS Devices (billions)
Entity
2015 2020 2025
estimates. For illustrative purposes, Fig. 9a and Fig. 9b show
Forecast 1 (19% CAGR) 0.7 1.9 5.1 plots of the estimated HAS device growth distribution, and the
Forecast 2 (22% CAGR) 2.4 5.7 14 corresponding energy consumption estimate over the 10-year
period, using the Forecast 2 projection.
16
Installed IoT Devices (Billions)

Smart Hub
IoT Gateway
14 IX. C ONCLUSION
Smart Appliances
12 IP Camera This paper has presented detailed measurements of devices
10 Smart Light Bulbs in consumer home automation systems and developed novel
Actuators
8
system-level energy models. The models account for key
Sensors
functional components of the devices and their operational
6 characteristics over time. Using this bottom-up approach, a
4 first-order estimate of the potential energy impact of consumer
HAS on the average household has been developed and
2 extended, using ICT industry projections, to estimate energy
0 consumption on a global scale.
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Our estimate indicates a household energy consumption
(a) increment of more than one-third of the current household
180
annual consumption for a simple off-the-shelf HAS deploy-
Smart Hub ment. This could be much higher if augmented by full-
Energy Consumption (TWh)

160 IoT Gateway scale video surveillance applications with higher throughput
Smart Appliances demand. Smart light bulbs were the least energy efficient of
140
IP Camera
120
the range of IoT devices considered and contribute the most to
Smart Light Bulbs
that additional consumption. Smarter design of these products
100 Actuators
should be the prime focus for product development. At a more
Sensors
80 general level, the balance between the potential benefits and
60
energy savings through “smartness”, as against the energy cost
of their “smartness”, should be considered.
40
On a global scale, the potential energy impact of HAS
20 deployment is non-trivial and could reach about 157 TWh
0 by 2025, nearly 14% of the global ICT industry energy
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 consumption forecast for that year (estimated at 1140 TWh
(b) [5]). It indicates that there is a significant price to pay if the
Fig. 9. (a) Global forecast of installed IoT devices for HAS [1]; (b) Global more optimistic market growth projections eventuate, while
energy consumption estimate for HAS devices. energy efficiency improvements do not match that growth.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TCE.2019.2962605, IEEE
Transactions on Consumer Electronics
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Chrispin Gray (S’13–M’18) completed his PhD
in electrical and electronic engineering at the Uni-
versity of Melbourne, Australia, in 2018; his thesis
focused on developing models and energy-efficient
architectures for Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks
and services. He has held a number of positions in
the telecommunications industry, including RF and
transmission network design and optimisation engi-
neer roles. His research interests include Internet of
Things (IoT), Edge Computing, Machine Learning
and access network technologies.
Robert Ayre received his B.Sc. degree in electronic
engineering from George Washington University,
Washington, DC, in 1967, and B.E. and M.Eng.Sc.
degrees from Monash University, Melbourne, Aus-
tralia, in 1970 and 1972, respectively. In 1972, he
joined Telstra Research Laboratories, working in a
number of roles, primarily in the areas of optical
transmission for core and access networks, and in
broadband networking. In 2007, he joined the Uni-
versity of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, where
he has been working on the energy efficiency of a
range of networking technologies.
Kerry Hinton received an Honours B.E. in 1978, an
Honours B.Sc. in 1980 and M.Sc. in Mathematical
Sciences in 1982, and a Ph.D. in 1984. In 1984,
he joined Telstra Research Laboratories, Australia.
In 2006, Dr. Hinton joined the Centre for Ultra
Broadband Information Networks at the University
of Melbourne, Australia. In 2011 he joined the Cen-
tre for Energy Efficient Telecommunications, also at
the University of Melbourne. From 2013 to 2016,
Dr. Hinton was Director of the CEET. Dr. Hinton
has authored over 130 papers, all in peer reviewed
journals and conferences.
Leith Campbell (M’87) is an Honorary Fellow,
Melbourne School of Engineering, University of
Melbourne. He has spent over 35 years in the
telecommunications industry, both in research and
development and as an international consultant on
telecommunications regulation. He serves on the
Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Telecom-
munications and the Digital Economy.