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ABSTRACT HEADING

Historical structures incur diverse challenges associated with energy consumption, specifically those surrounding opportunities for potential improvements. In the U.S., heating and cooling of spaces can account for up to half of all energy usage within a home. As a result, identification of cost-effective methods towards enhancing energy efficiency represents critical information for homeowners and businesses alike, and a measurable estimator of potential monetary investment and return. In this paper, a novel DC-powered picogrid is developed to support a local weather station adjacent to a residential home in order to optimize its energy consumption. Though regional meteorological data is readily available from numerous online cloud-services, in-situ environmental measurements afford more building-specific insights, ranging from wind direction and speed, humidity and dew-point levels, and UV and irradiance measurements. When coupled with on-site renewable energy generation such as solar and wind power, this weather data can drive real-time electrical management decisions (e.g., storing or expending battery energy, selling electricity to the grid, etc.), and also be leveraged for daily and weekly power consumption and generation forecasting. These findings illustrate the benefits of DC-powered designs, and the capability of low-cost sensors to improve residential energy administration.