Final two Interns@SmartGrid_Group

For the last two months we had further two interns working at our institute. We report a short interview about their work and experiences at our research group.

What's your name?

Julia

What are you studying?

I am studying electrical engineering and industrial electronics at the HTL Mössingerstraße in Klagenfurt and this year I've finished the 4th class.

What are your expectations for the future?

I want to conclude the HTL with good marks, then I would like to study something that combines electrical engineering and economics.

What are you working on?

LabView GUI

I have worked on a LabVIEW measurement program for a photovoltaic system and have also created a consumer box for the lab, where we want to simulate a household. I have installed input modules, which are used for measuring voltage and current, and an output module, which is used for turning the devices on and off. These modules are implemented into my LabView program and further I have created an interface, where the user is able to input data to the program and view power and current consumption. There is also the possibility to read the measured data and control the devices through a web service in the network. I have also installed the hardware elements in the cabinet, created the wiring plan and ordered appliances. The aim of the program is to be used as a control of consumer devices like a refrigerator, water heater and radiator, which are turned on at the time, when the current price is on the lowest peak. Thus this could be an innovative application for saving costs and has to be researched.

Laboratory Installations

What did you like of the project

I liked about my work that I had the chance to contribute my own ideas and expand my programming skills in LabVIEW. It was a very varied project and I liked the mix of manual work and logical thinking.

What's your name?

Johannes

What are you studying?

I'm studying electronics and technical informatics at the HTL Mössingerstraße in Klagenfurt. I have finished my second year.

What are you expectations for the future?

After finishing the HTL, I want to study computer science.

What are you working on?

I was working on Java classes for a Smart Grid Simulator which make it possible to use algorithms from the GridLAB-D simulator. To submit this, I converted all data stored by objects from the Smart Grid Simulator into a file which is then used by GridLAB-D. The output files made by GridLAB-D are read and the values are assigned to the proper object.

OpenEnergyMonitor

GridLAB-D to Smart Grid Simulator 

I was also working on an open source energy monitor made by Openenerymonitor. My task was to enable it to change the refresh rate on the transmitter (emonTX) by using buttons on the receiver (emonGLCD). The difficult thing was to send and receive data at a time using the same transceiver.

Power Profile Generation in Java

My final project was the implementation of a Java program, which generates random power profiles of different appliances out of a given database, place this random profiles randomly in time and finally, tries to detect which appliance was used or not. The technique of appliance detection is called Non-Intrusive Load monitoring and enjoys currently an great interest in research.
What did you like of the project?

I like programming a lot. So I had the opportunity to improve my skills.