Home Energy Management Systems: Challenges, Heterogeneity & Integration Architecture Towards A Smart City Ecosystem

The contemporary era is marked by rapid urban growth and increasing population. A significant, and constantly growing, portion of the global population now resides in major cities, leading to escalating energy demands in urban centers. As urban population is expected to keep on expanding in the near future, the same is also expected to happen with the associated energy requirements. The situation with the continuously increasing energy demand, along with the emergence of smart grids and the capabilities that are already -- or can be -- offered by Home Energy Management System (HEMS), has created a lot of opportunities towards a more sustainable future, with optimized energy consumption and demand response, which leads to economic and environmental benefits, based on the actual needs of the consumers. In this paper, we begin by providing an analytical exploration of the challenges faced at both the development and deployment levels. We proceed with a thorough analysis and comparison between the abundance of devices, smart home technologies, and protocols currently used by various products. Following, aiming to blunt the currently existing challenges, we propose a reliable, flexible, and extendable architectural schema. Finally, we analyze a number of potential ways in which the data deriving from such implementations can be analyzed and leveraged, in order to produce services that offer useful insights and smart solutions towards enhanced energy efficiency.