1. Field
Embodiments relate to a washing machine, a power management apparatus, and a method of controlling the same to conserve power.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the development of Information Technology (IT), the number of household appliances powered by electricity is rapidly increasing, in turn leading to increasing power consumption. As can be seen from a power demand pattern, peak capacity is not reached during most days of the year, that is to say, power plants only operate at full capacity during a few days out of the year.
A state in which a high power demand is required for a short time is called peak load. Costs for constructing an additional power plant are extremely high and maintenance costs for power plants constructed to maintain peak load for a short period are considerable.
Recently, numerous developers are conducting intensive research into a demand management method for temporarily restricting power consumption by limiting peak load without constructing such additional power plants. For the aforementioned purposes, demand management is a focus of attention, and a great deal of research is focused upon an advanced demand management format for demand response (DR).
DR is a system for intelligently managing energy consumption depending upon variation in power rates. That is, the consumer uses power in response to power rates rather than according to an ordinary power consumption pattern.
By means of the DR, a power-supply source can alter user power consumption to achieve load balancing and can restrict user power consumption to periods when demand is low, thereby reducing the user's overall energy expenditure.
Therefore, smart electric devices to which DR is applied and an energy management system (EMS) which controls the operations of the smart electric devices have been developed. The EMS informs the user of power rate information and turns an electric device on or off on the basis of the power rate information. Accordingly, the user cannot obtain a result at a desired time.
For example, a washing machine or a drying machine heats air and dries clothes using the heated air when performing a drying operation, and thus the total power consumption as well as instantaneous power consumption are very high. Accordingly, the washing machine or the drying machine may not perform the drying operation in case of high power rates and the user cannot obtain dried clothes at a desired time.
Furthermore, if the washing machine or the drying machine is driven in a high power rate period to dry clothes when the user wants, the dry level the user expects is not obtained since the washing machine or the drying machine performs the drying operation in a state in which the operations of all components thereof are deteriorated.