The Home Area Network, or HAN, refers to the ecosystem of devices within the home that are connected to the smart grid through a smart meter, home energy gateway, or directly in some cases. Some examples of these devices are in-home displays for power consumption monitoring, smart appliances that respond to time of use pricing signals, smart thermostats that cycle the air conditioning in response to peak load reduction signaling from the utilities, or smart plugs that can monitor power consumption and control appliances. The activities in the HAN can be broadly split into three categories: 1) Measurement 2) Communication and 3) Control. TI has comprehensive solutions to address each of these three categories. Measurement refers to the metrology or power measurement piece, it is addressed by a suite of solutions based on the MSP430 microcontroller. Communications between the smart meter and devices can be via a wireless standard such as ZigBee. The devices in the HAN might communicate with each other via Powerline communications, ZigBee or other wireless standards such as WiFi. TI has proven solutions, both software and hardware, supporting each of these communication interfaces. The last piece of the HAN is controlling the components based on the measurement and communication. This can be done using in-home displays or via a web portal. It can also be done by sending signals directly to load controllers or smart plugs. This module will now explore Smart Plugs as an example of a HAN application.