GREEND: An Energy Consumption Dataset of Households in Italy and Austria

Some days ago, we got notice that our paper "GREEND: An Energy Consumption Dataset of Households in Italy and Austria" is accepted at the IEEE SmartGridComm 2014. The SmartGridComm 2014 will take place in Venice, a fascinating and marvelous Italian city, on November 3-6, 2014.

GREEND: An Energy Consumption Dataset of Households in Italy and Austria, 
Andrea Monacchi, Dominik Egarter, Wilfried Elmenreich, Salvatore D’Alessandro, Andrea M. Tonello

Home energy management systems can be used to monitor and optimize consumption and local production from renewable energy. To assess solutions before their deployment, researchers and designers of those systems demand for energy consumption datasets. In this paper, we present the GREEND dataset, containing detailed power usage information obtained through a measurement campaign in households in Austria and Italy. We provide a description of consumption scenarios and discuss design choices for the sensing infrastructure. Finally, we bench- mark the dataset with state-of-the-art techniques in load disaggregation, occupancy detection and appliance usage mining.

An authors' version is available in arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.3100

The GREEND dataset is publicly availble, donwload the newest version at https://sourceforge.net/projects/greend/files/GREEND_0-2_300615.zip

Google and Microsoft back away from online power metering

Google PowerMeter and Microsoft Hohm are online web applications that enable consumers to analyze their energy usage and provide energy saving recommendations. The basic idea is to have an  application in the cloud that is using predictions, smart meters, and energy monitoring devices in order to provide you with information and recommendations about your home's power usage.

While Google's application came for free, Microsoft's tool was planned as a product to create revenue. Now, both projects are discontinued. PowerMeter was retired by Google in September 2011, joining the club of Google Wave and Google Health. In Google's official blog, the reason is only briefly stated as "efforts have not scaled as quickly as we would like", which leaves room to some interpretation. Microsoft's Hohm will be discontinued on May 31, 2012 due to a lack of consumer uptake.

This is sad, since a comprehensive user interface with web integration is a major asset in comparison to existing powermeters with their limited LCD displays and gray buttons. Remember, we are talking about an appliance that is basically planned to enter every household, not just being a tool for geeks. We certainly need a convenient user interface here.
With the bailout out of Google and Microsoft, two important drivers of innovation will be missing, on the other hand this might open the market for new developments. Apple, having filed a patent on a smart-home energy management dashboard system seems to be planning something, but it's still unclear what we will get.

Video on Google's PowerMeter when they were still enthusiastic