Abstract
Demand-side management is a feature incorporated in the smart grid that opts to shave the peak demands by monitoring and controlling appliances inside residential areas. Smart meter along with the smart plug is a vital ingredient for the realization of the demand-side management program. This paper discusses the feature of the smart plug and describes through a use case the potential of the Internet of Things, IoT, for the implementation of a low-cost and inter-operable smart plug. A smart plug prototype using Arduino and Zigbee based communication protocol has been designed and verified. The smart plug is capable of measuring instantaneous current, voltage, power, RMS values of the current, power factor, RMS value of the voltage, and the real power. The experimental results show that the smart meter has an accuracy of over 78%.