  In this paper we present a systematic review of various home energy
management (HEM) schemes. Employment of home energy management programs will
make the electricity consumption smarter and more efficient. Advantages of HEM
include, increased savings for consumers as well as utilities, reduced peak to
average ratio (PAR) and peak demand. Where there are numerous applications of
smart grid technologies, home energy management is probably the most important
one to be addressed. Utilities across the globe have taken various steps for
efficient consumption of electricity. New pricing schemes like, Real Time
Pricing (RTP), Time of Use (ToU), Inclining Block Rates (IBR), Critical Peak
Pricing (CPP) etc, have been proposed for smart grid. Distributed Energy
Resources (DER) (local generation) and/or home appliances coordination along
with different tariff schemes lead towards efficient consumption of
electricity. This work also discusses a HEM systems general architecture and
various challenges in implementation of this architecture in smart grid.
