Environmental impacts and benefits of smart home automation:life cycle assessment of home energy management system

Abstract This paper discusses the life-cycle environmental impact of Home Energy Management System (HEMS), in terms of their potential benefits and detrimental impacts. It is the expectation that adapting smart home automation (SHA) would lead to reduced electricity usage in the household and overall environmental advantages. The purpose of this research was to quantify the negative environmental impacts of SHA and balance them with their benefits. The evaluation of SHA has been done by conducting a generic Life cycle assessment study using SimaPro programme and the EcoInvent database. The LCA study concluded that the largest environmental impact of HEMS is the use-phase electricity consumption of home automation devices. The paper concludes that the energy payback time of home automation in term of the electricity consumption of the devices is negative by 1.6 years. The largest part of this is due to the energy consumption of smart plugs. Therefore, the paper concludes that in terms of home automation, we need to find the balance between what we actually need to control and the resulting energy consumption of the control system