As energy systems increasingly depend on variable renewable energy sources, integrating demand flexibility technologies becomes crucial. Enhancing demand flexibility, including at a household level, is essential to minimise the costs and risks associated with the transition to clean energy. Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) are systems that can connect to multiple residential energy devices and a communications network to provide monitoring and control, optimising household energy storage, generation and consumption for the benefit of the household and the broader energy system.

The functionality and use cases of HEMS vary with the maturity of the particular system, and the household appliances integrated into the HEMS ecosystem. Customer assets connected to HEMS can include solar PV, home batteries, EV chargers, and controllable energy loads such as hot water systems, heating/cooling equipment (including smart thermostats), pool pumps, pool heating, and other smart appliances, lights or plug loads controlled by smart devices. At the basic level, HEMS provides real-time monitoring of energy consumption and production in the home, along with a level of scheduling and remote user control of appliances. As they become more sophisticated, the HEMS systems can provide optimisation of rooftop solar self-consumption, optimisation of financial benefit, as well as responding to external market and network signals (Delta-EE, 2021; gridX, 2024; Strauli et al., 2022).

This research investigates the global HEMS market addressing key questions about existing products, market penetration, product categories, interoperability, and relevant policies. The research was conducted through extensive desktop reviews of market intelligence reports, product data, and industry documents.