Finding Resilient and Energy-saving Control Strategies in Smart Homes

Evolutionary computing has demonstrated its effectiveness in supporting the development of robust and intelligent systems: when used in combination with formal and quantitative models, it becomes a primary tool in critical systems. Among the modern critical infrastructures, smart energy grids are getting a growing interest from many communities (academic, industrial and political) fostering the development of a robust energy distribution infrastructure. Energy grids are also an example of critical cyber physical social systems since their equilibrium can be perturbed not only by cyber and physical attacks but also by economical and social crises as well as changes in the consumption profiles. The paper illustrates a practical framework supporting the run-time evolution of the control logic inside the Smart Meter: the centre of modern Smart Homes. By combining the modeling and analysis capabilities of Fluid Stochastic Petri Nets and the flexibility of Genetic Programming, this approach can be used to adapt the control logic of the Smart Meters to the changes of the structure and functionalities of the Smart Home as well as of the operational environment. While the main objective of the evolution is to guarantee the energetic sustainability of the Smart Home, the fulfilment of the user's requirements about the energetic need of the home allows to preserve the identity of the Smart Meter during its evolution.