Evolving NILM to NIAD: Non-Intrusive Activity Detection

Almost all documented practical use cases of load disaggregation rely on the analysis of appliance operational times and their impact on the monthly electricity bill. However, load disaggregation bears promising potential for other use cases. Recognizing user activities without the need to set up a dedicated sensing infrastructure is one such application, given that many household activities involve the use of electrical appliances. State-of-the-art disaggregation algorithms only provide support for the recognition of one appliance at a time, however. 

In collaboration with Andreas Reinhardt from TU Clausthal, we thus take load disaggregation to the next level, and present to what extent it is applicable to monitor user activities involving multiple appliances (operating sequentially or in parallel) using this technique. For the evaluation of our Non-Intrusive Activity Detection (NIAD), we synthetically generate load signature data to model nine typical user activities, followed by an assessment to what extent they can be detected in aggregate electrical consumption data. Our results prove that state-of-the-art load disaggregation algorithms are also well-suited to identify user activities, at accuracy levels comparable to (but slightly below) the disaggregation of individual appliances.

Our paper is to appear at the 2nd ACM Workshop on Device-Free Human Sensing (DFHS'20):

Andreas Reinhardt and Christoph Klemenjak. 2020. Device-Free User Activity Detection using Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring: A Case Study. In The 2nd ACM Workshop on Device-Free Human Sensing (DFHS ’20), November 15, 2020, Virtual Event, Japan.

 We are happily looking forward to pitching the concept of NIAD to the community!

Stop! Exploring Bayesian Surprise for Load Disaggregation

In our latest paper, which is the result of the ongoing collaboration between our lab and SFU's Computational Sustainability Lab, we bring the concept of Bayesian Surprise to NILM. When has enough prior training been done? When has a NILM algorithm encountered new, unseen data? We apply the notion of Bayesian surprise to answer these important questions for both, supervised and unsupervised algorithms.

"Bayesian surprise quantifies how data affects natural or artificial observers, by measuring differences between posterior and prior beliefs of the observers" - ilab.usc.edu

Bayesian Surprise is measured in "wow"

We compare the performance of several NILM algorithms to establish a suggested threshold on two combined measures of surprise: postdictive surprise and transitional surprise.

We provide preliminary insights and clear evidence showing a point of diminishing returns for model performance with respect to dataset size, which can have implications for future model development, dataset acquisition, as well as aiding in model flexibility during deployment.

The paper is to appear at the 5th International Workshop on Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM'20): 

Richard Jones, Christoph Klemenjak, Stephen Makonin, and Ivan V. Bajić. 2020. Stop! Exploring Bayesian Surprise to Better Train NILM. In The 5th International Workshop on Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM ’20), November 18, 2020, Virtual Event, Japan.

An author's copy can be obtained from Christoph's personal website

We are looking forward to discussing this novel approach for NILM.

European NILM workshop 2015 in London

I'm really happy to here that there will be a Second European Workshop on Non-intrusive Load Monitoring this summer.
The event was announced from Oliver Parson, an organizer of the Workshop, as follows:

I'm really excited to announce that the Second European Workshop on Non-intrusive Load Monitoring will be held on 8th July 2015 at Imperial College London. The workshop is the follow up to last year's NILM @ London workshop, which provided the first European venue which brought together both academics and companies with an interest in energy disaggregation. Updates and registration information can be found at the new website: www.nilm.eu

Some important information:

When: 8th July 2015
Where: Imperial College London, UK
Cost: Free
Objective: To provide a European venue for disaggregation researchers to discuss recent developments in the field and fuel future collaborations

This workshop will have a more technical focus than the first workshop, and will feature a keynote from Mario Bergés in the morning and a technical session of invited talks in the afternoon. Furthermore, we're inviting all attendees to bring a poster on a topic of their choice, which could be a recent piece of work, their company's current direction, or even an invitation for collaboration on a joint project. Last, we're hoping to live stream the event online for anyone who can't be there in person, though this is a little experimental!

For more information please visit www.nilm.eu!

Call for Papers 1st Workshop on Middleware for a Smarter Use of Electric Energy

CALL FOR PAPERS

MidSEE 2015

1st Workshop on Middleware for a Smarter Use of Electric Energy

in conjunction with NetSys 2015, Cottbus, Germany

https://www.netsys2015.com/workshops-tutorials/midsee/

MOTIVATION & WORKSHOP SCOPE

Smart energy meters are increasingly installed in newly constructed buildings worldwide, as regulated by, e.g., the European Union's Energy Services Directive. Their combination with the vision of an Internet of Things, in which billions of embedded devices will continually monitor the environment, enables the fine-grained monitoring of household and office energy usage and hence a large range of novel services. While many such functions have been devised so far (e.g., advice how to save energy or the disaggregation of electricity bills), these solutions commonly rely on the availability of hard- and software systems by a single manufacturer. Interoperability, including the potential to integrate new energy metering devices, is mostly unsupported due to the wide variety of (non-compatible) standards and communication protocols.

This workshop provides a platform to present current research activities in communications and processing of energy consumption data, with its primary focus on electric energy usage. The scope of the workshop includes contributions that address the integration of energy metering equipment from different manufacturers into a single middleware system which operates on a building level, as well as novel means to collect, process and visualize these data. Accepted papers will not only present novel research results in these domains, but also comprise an evaluation in which their merits are assessed.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Novel energy metering hardware designs and experiences
• Data collection and command distribution protocols for energy  management systems
• Middleware systems for energy data, including novel local data processing algorithms
• Control of alternative energy sources to increase their production efficiency
• Innovative tools to model and visualize energy expenditure and production
• Sensing and actuation of electrical loads
• Privacy and security in energy management middleware systems
• User interfaces for energy display, management and control

PAPER SUBMISSION

Authors are invited to submit papers of up to 6 pages in IEEE two-column format. Submissions must be original and should not have been published previously or be under consideration for publication while being evaluated for this workshop. Accepted papers will be published in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. More details about the ubmission process can be found on the website.


IMPORTANT DATES

Submission:   Sep. 26th, 2014
Notification: Nov. 17th, 2014
Camera Ready: Dec. 10th, 2014
Workshop:     Mar. 12th, 2015


WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

Andreas Reinhardt, The University of New South Wales, Australia
Christian Renner, Universität zu Lübeck, Germany
Delphine Christin, University of Bonn & Fraunhofer FKIE, Germany


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Matteo Ceriotti, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Alexander De Luca, LMU München, Germany
Paul Dunphy, Newcastle University, UK
Wilfried Elmenreich, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria
Stefan Fischer, Universität zu Lübeck, Germany
Hannes Frey, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Stefan Katzenbeisser, TU Darmstadt, Germany
Marco Ortolani, University of Palermo, Italy
Oliver Parson, University of Southampton, UK
Daniele Puccinelli, SUPSI, Switzerland
Christian Steger, TU Graz, Austria
Volker Turau, TU Hamburg-Harburg, Germany
Sebastian Zöller, TU Darmstadt, Germany

Workshop on Human Centered Energy Management

1st Interdisciplinary Workshop on Human Centered Energy Management
to be held from 7th to 11th of July 2014
at Lakeside Science & Technology Park, Klagenfurt, Austria.

An inter-faculty research field “Energy Management and Energy Technologies”, staffed by academics from a wide range of disciplines, has recently been established at the Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt (AAU Klagenfurt). Research efforts focus on energy management and energy innovation, networked and de- central energy systems. Together with the Faculty of Technical Sciences (TeWi), the Faculty for Management and Economics (WiWi) and the Faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies (IFF), this new research area will be further developed in cooperation with external partners such as the Lakeside Park.







The Lakeside Park is a platform for cooperation between enterprises and university institutions in the information and communication technology (ICT) sectors. A place of interdisciplinary research and development, training, production and services. The focus of the Lakeside Park is on selected topics of information and communication technology and complementary technologies such as energy systems. In the Interreg IV projects “Smart Energy” and “Efficient, Effective, Smart” the Lakeside Park establishes inter-regional contacts to strengthen collaborative research and development. Therefore, the Lakeside Park and the AAU introduce this novel interdisciplinary workshop with focus on “Human Centered Energy Management”.

Lakeside Park Klagenfurt with a view to the Wörthersee

Human Centered Energy Management

To ensure an efficient production, supply and consumption of energy, it is necessary to introduce novel technologies. Energy monitoring units, new smart control and managing techniques shall improve energy efficiency in the smallest entities of the common power grid – the Smart Building with its inhabitants and its neighborhood. In that respect the individual human being plays a crucial role for energy management tasks. On the one hand it is necessary to improve the energy efficiency of the costumer’s home to reduce energy consumption and costs. On the other hand also the decrease of environmental pollution by optimal utilization of energy resources is a major task of future energy systems.

The proposed workshop “Human Centered Energy Management” takes up these tasks and tries to identify problems and solutions for human centered energy management tasks in an interdisciplinary manner.

Format and Objectives

The aim of the workshop is to give regional experts, such as local professors and young researchers of the AAU, the opportunity to discuss and elaborate ideas with world-wide experts and to introduce and to discuss further ideas in an interdisciplinary setup. Therefore, participants with academic backgrounds and an interest on novel smart energy management systems as well as companies and research institutes are welcome to present and to discuss their research tasks and ideas.

The workshop will have a dedicated “industry day” providing the companies a platform to introduce their problems and to elaborate possible solutions and ideas with experts in the field of energy systems from different disciplines. The general format of the workshop lasts one week with key-speaker inputs and group work with discussions and presentations. Therefore, the event provides an excellent platform for scientific exchange, networking, establishment of international collaboration and the initiation of joint research projects.

Addressed Topics:

• ICT solutions and approaches for smart home management and systems for integrated energy management.
• Integration of smart and legacy appliances, renewable energy sources and storage systems in buildings to improve energy efficiency and awareness of inhabitants.
• Identification, modeling and simulation of energy systems and human behavior
• Energy data analysis and feedback approaches and behavior influencing information systems
• Economics and law aspects of human centered energy managements systems in respect to smart homes, smart metering and energy data analysis as well as for renewable energy production and storage systems.
• Market and business models for ICT-based energy services designed to improve the recent power grid and homes.

For more information about the workshop and how it is possible to participate, please contact dominik.egarter@aau.at.

Impressions from BuildSys 2013

The 5th ACM Workshop On Embedded Systems For Energy-Efficient Buildings (BuildSys) 2013 were hold from the 13th to 14th of November in Rome, where the two researcher Dominik Egarter and Andrea Monacchi participated in. According to the general BuildSys chair the Workshops' aims can be summarized as follows:

The entrance of La Sapienza University, Rome, where SenSys and BuildSys were held

"BuildSys is a venue for discussing new directions in the monitoring, control, and management of energy consumption in buildings, and the generation of awareness and sustainability for an efficient energy market. BuildSys brings together researchers from a multitude of disciplines with a common goal to develop energy saving strategies that can have a major impact worldwide. BuildSys 2013 follows four successful predecessors held in Berkeley, Zurich, Seattle, and Toronto."

This year the workshop had 7 different season such as:

• Energy Efficiency in Homes,
• Data Analysis,
• Occupancy Detection, Monitoring & Use,
• Sensing for Energy,
• Energy and Water,
• HVAC, Modeling and Control and
• Thermal Comfort Management,

Andrea and Dominik at their posters 

where in total 22 papers were presented. In addition to the general paper presentation, the workshop offers a poster and demo session, where 10 posters and 8 demos were presented. The Smart Grid Group not only visited workshop, Dominik and Andrea were presenting two posters. Dominik showed his current result of Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) techniques with the title Appliance State Estimation Based on Particle Filtering. In this paper he showed how it is possible to apply Particle Filtering to the problem of aggregated power loads and how beneficial this approach can be. Moreover, Andreas poster has the title Insert Coin: turning the household into a prepaid billing system and propose an approach for raising energy awareness by combining appliance-level consumption information with prepaid billing so as to turn appliances in pay-as-you-go devices.

D. Egarter, Venkata Pathuri Bhuvana, W. Elmenreich. Appliance State Estimation Based on Particle Filtering, 5th ACM Workshop on Embedded Systems For Energy-Efficient Buildings, Rome, Italy, 2013.

A. Monacchi, W. Elmenreich. Insert Coin: turning the household into a prepaid billing system,5th ACM Workshop on Embedded Systems For Energy-Efficient Buildings (BuildSys'13), Rome, Italy, 2013

Appliance State Estimation based on Particle Filtering

The load disaggregation problem

Dominik Egarter will present his work on Appliance State Estimation based on Particle Filtering at  the 5th ACM Workshop on Embedded Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings (BuildSys'13) which will take place in Rome, Italy at 13th and 14th October 2013.

Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring is a single-point metering approach to identify and to monitor household appliances according their appliance power characteristics. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised classification approach for appliance state estimation of on/off-appliances modeled by a Hidden Markov Model (HMM). To estimate the states of appliances, we use the sequential Monte Carlo or Particle Filtering (PF) method. The proposed algorithm is tested with MATLAB simulations and is evaluated according to correctly or incorrectly detected on/off events.
On other approaches for solving the NILM problem, see:

Particle filter method

Read more about the approach in:

D. Egarter, Venkata Pathuri Bhuvana, W. Elmenreich. Appliance State Estimation Based on Particle Filtering, 5th ACM Workshop on Embedded Systems For Energy-Efficient Buildings, Rome, Italy, 2013.

On other approaches for solving the NILM problem, see:

D. Egarter and W. Elmenreich. EvoNILM - Evolutionary appliance detection for miscellaneous household appliances. In Proceedings of the Green and Efficient Energy Applications of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation at the 2013 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2013 GreenGEC). ACM, July 2013.

D. Egarter, A. Sobe, and W. Elmenreich. Evolving non-intrusive load monitoring. In Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary and bio-inspired Computation, pages 182–191, Vienna, Austria, April 2013.