Open-Source Energy Monitoring Hardware

OpenEnergyMonitor hardware: raspberry pi, emonTX
 and emonGLCD

In our smart microgrid laboratory at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt we need to be able to measure energy flows at different places in the network. Our criteria had been to be able to measure power, current, and voltage with adjustable measurement time intervals. The meters should be networked wirelessly with a visualisation possibility via an embedded device or a web page. In order to implement appropriate measurement strategies (for example measuring with a time-triggered architecture) the system should be fully programmable, in other words open-source. 

emonCMS web-app visualization tool

To meet this requirements we decided to use the OpenEnergyMonitor. It provides a metering board emonTx, which is based on Arduino and communicates to some base station. This can be either a own-built base station emonBase from OpenEnergyMonitor or the nowadays trendy Raspberry Pi. All necessary software is provided and easy to use. The OpenEnergyMonitor also provides an energy visualisation tool called emonCMS, which can be installed on the Raspberry Pi. It can be used for processing, logging and visualizing energy. Like the other software also the emonCMS is open source.

Links:

• Raspberry Pi, a credit-card-sized embedded computer running Linux
• OpenEnergyMonitor, open-source energy monitoring tools
• A. Monacchi, D. Egarter, W. Elmenreich. Integrating Households into the Smart Grid. Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems, Berkeley, CA, May 2013.
• W. Elmenreich, G. Bauer, and H. Kopetz. The time-triggered paradigm. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Time-Triggered and Real-Time Communication Systems, 2003.

How do you use your electrictiy?

MONERGY

The MONERGY project aims to develop innovations that contribute to a more efficient energy consumption in households. We look specifically at the situation in the regions of Carinthia and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

To guide our research efforts, we need your help in the form of a short survey (approximately 10 minutes) on the use of electrical appliances at home:

• Survey: Energieverbrauch (in German language)
• Survey: Consumo di energia (in Italian language)

Since we especially aim at the situation in Carinthia and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the survey is only available in Italian and German. If you don't live in that region, your contribution is still helpful and appreciated, but there is no English version, sorry.

The results and conclusions will be published later on via the MONERGY website (in German/Italian) and in this blog (in English language).

Looking forward to your participation in the survey!

Energy Aware Software-Engineering and Development (EASED@BUIS)

2. Workshop on Energy Aware Software-Engineering and Development (EASED@BUIS)

25.04.2013

Oldenburg (Oldb.)
Kulturzentrum PFL
Peterstraße 3

The EASED workshop will be held in conjunction with the 5th BUIS-Days: IT-based resource and energy management.
Utilization of mobile and embedded devices, and thus their induced energy consumption, is constantly increasing. Reducing the energy consumption of such devices will not only improve the carbon footprint of contemporary mobile IT usage, but will also extend the device lifetime, improve user acceptance and reduce operational costs.
Next to serious and ongoing efforts in hardware design and on operating system level, software engineering techniques will also contribute to optimize energy consumption by improving software design and software quality. The EASED@BUIS workshop, which follows up the Workshop on Developing Energy Aware Software Systems (EEbS 2012), held at the annual GI Conference in September 2012, provides a broad forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss ongoing works, latest results, and common topics of interest regarding the improvement of software induced energy consumption.
Intensive discussions at the first workshop identified a major challenge in optimizing energy efficiency, which is to precisely measure energy consumption of software regarding user behavior.
Thus, the follow workshop EASED@BUIS will focus on the following topics:

• approaches and techniques to estimate or measure the energy consumption of software components,
• approaches to define standardized usage scenarios of applications on mobile devices to provide repeatable measurement of energy consumption in concrete application settings,
• approaches to model the energy consumption of software components, and
• experiences on measuring and improving the energy consumption of software components. 

Well elaborated and standardized measurement means will provide an important foundation to detecting sources of wasting energy caused by software systems and will enable validation means to verify energy savings by software improvements.
EASED@BUIS will be organized as a one day discussion-intensive workshop to provoke intensive collaborations among the participants. It is intended to initiate collaborative works on standardizing (static and dynamic) measuring techniques for energy consumption.
To further stimulate these discussions, authors are invited to submit position papers one on the        workshop´s topics. Accepted papers will be presented at the workshop and will be published in Softwaretechnik-Trends.
EASED@BUIS is supported by the GI special Interest groups Software Technology and Environmental Informatics.

Submissions and important Dates
Authors are encouraged to submit their position papers (2 pages in two column form) not later than March 15, 2013 through easychair.
paper submission deadline: March 15, 2013
author notification: March 25, 2013
camera-ready deadline: April 1, 2013
Organizing Committee
Christian Bunse (University of the Applied Sciences Stralsund)

Stefan Naumann (University of the Applied Sciences Trier, Environmental Campus Birkenfeld)

Andreas Winter (Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg)

Program Committee
Colin Atkinson (University Mannheim)
Paris Avgeriou (University of Groningen)
Holger Eichelberger (University Hildesheim)
Sebastian Götz (TU Dresden)
Theo Härder (TU Kaiserslautern)
Mirco Josefiok (OFFIS, Oldenburg)
Ákos Kiss (University of Szeged)
Sonja Klingert (University Mannheim)
Patricia Lago (VU University Amsterdam)
Thierry Leboucq (KaliTerre, Nantes)
Birgit Penzenstadler (TU München)
Giuseppe Scanniello (University of Basilicata)
Maximilian Schirmer (Bauhaus-University Weimar)
Gunnar Schomaker (OFFIS Oldenburg)
Joost Visser (Software Improvement Group, Amsterdam)
Claas Wilke (TU Dresden)
Alexandru Telea (University of Groningen)
Local Organization
Marion Gottschalk (Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg)
Andreas Winter (Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg)

Evolving Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring

Our paper Evolving Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring by Dominik Egarter, Anita Sobe and Wilfried Elmenreich has been accepted for the conference track EvoEnergy (Evolutionary Algorithms in Energy Applications) of the EvoApplication (16th European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation) 2013, taking place in Vienna form 3rd to 5th of April.

Basic principle of the ON/OFF time genome appliance
detection. Given is the total power consumption over
time. The goal is to deduce the on/off times of devices
(colored blocks) that add up to the measured power profile.

Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) identifies used appliances in a total power load according to their individual load characteristics. In this paper we propose an evolutionary optimization algorithm to identify appliances, which are modeled as on/off appliances. We evaluate our proposed evolutionary optimization by simulation with Matlab, where we use a random total load and randomly generated power profiles to make a statement of the applicability of the evolutionary algorithm as optimization technique for NILM. Our results shows that the evolutionary approach is feasible to be used in NILM systems and can reach satisfying detection probabilities.



Dominik Egarter, Anita Sobe, Wilfried Elmenreich,   Evolving Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring,   EvoApplication 2013,   16th European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation, April, 2013

Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems 2013

Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems 2013

May 20 2013, Berkeley CA

http://www.palensky.org/mscpes/

Modern energy systems combine information technology, electrical and thermal infrastructure, autonomous roles and interact with other systems like markets and regulations. Existing modeling and simulation tools are not capable to cover such systems in all of their aspects, new languages, methods and tools are necessary. A combination of universal modeling languages like Modelica and established, specialized tools like grid simulators and telecommunication simulators is necessary. This leads to modeling and co-simulating hybrid systems where for instance a multi-agent framework and an electric grid simulator are combined to investigate smart electric vehicle charging algorithms. It is especially the potential size of such systems that constitute a challenge for modeling and simulation. Implementing these future CPS are another substantial challenge. The designed algorithms need to be compact, computationally inexpensive, potentially self-organizing and intrinsically stable if applied to real energy systems. New methods and alternative ways are necessary to overcome these challenges.

This workshop is a platform for researchers and developers to exchange ideas to the following (not exhaustive) list of topics:

-    Hybrid modeling and simulation

-    Co-Simulation

-    High-performance computing

-    Analytics of system data

-    Ontologies for energy systems

-    Applications of cyber-physical energy systems

-    Distributed algorithms and control

-    Standards in interfacing components

-    Numerics for hybrid and co-simulation

-    Formal languages for energy systems

-    Smart Grid modeling

-    Demand response and power quality

-    Information and communication technology for intelligent energy systems

Submitted papers are peer-reviewed by at least 3 reviewers. Workshop language is English. Proceedings will be published by Springer.

Full paper submission: January 31, 2013

Notification of acceptance: February 20, 2013

Your workshop chairs,

Peter Palensky (Austrian Institute of Technology)

Edward A.Lee (University of California Berkeley)

Open PhD/Postdoc Positions at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria

1 Postdoc and 1 PhD researcher on Smart Energy Systems (full-time)

We work on integrating energy generators and consumers into a smart electricity grid. The goal is to build up a microgrid lab and perform applied research with industrial partners. One PhD and one Senior Researcher will be hired. We are a highly motivated international team of researchers situated at the Lakeside Science & Technology Park/University of Klagenfurt, Austria. We offer best work conditions, a beautiful campus with a pleasant, intercultural work environment, and a highly competitive salary. Potential candidates should have a master's degree (for PhD position)/a doctoral degree (for postdoc position) in computer science, computer engineering, mathematics, physics or related studies and should have skills in creative problem solving, energy systems, and the use of the English language. Further information about the project can be found here.

PhD researcher on Complex Systems Engineering (full-time)

We are offering a position for a researcher within the MESON (Modeling and Engineering of Self-Organizing Networks) project. We are a highly motivated international team of researchers situated at the Lakeside Science & Technology Park/University of Klagenfurt, Austria. We offer best work conditions, a beautiful campus with a pleasant, intercultural work environment, and a highly competitive salary. Potential candidates should have a master's degree in computer science, computer engineering, mathematics, physics or related studies and should have skills in creative problem solving, Java programming, the use of the English language and knowledge in at least one of the following subjects: Complex systems, Machine Learning, Multi-agent systems, Smart Grid. Further information about the MESON project can be found on the project webpage: http://meson.lakeside-labs.com

Information for Applicants

Research will be conducted at the Institute of Networked and Embedded Systems under the supervision of Professor Wilfried Elmenreich. Working language is English. The institute cooperates with national and international partners from industry and academia and is part of the research cluster Lakeside Labs. Women are especially encouraged to apply. Please mail applications containing a letter of interest, curriculum vitae, copies of academic certificates and courses, list of publications, and contact details of two references in a single PDF file to applications@lakeside-labs.com by deadline of January15th, 2013.

Keeping an eye on my Photovoltaic System

Guest Post by Benjamin Steinwender

At my home place we have recently installed two photovoltaic systems with a total peak power production of 15 kW. From the first moment my dad confronted me with this idea, I wanted to record time series data of any measurement signal I could obtain from the system. Most promising was the fact of an included web server on the power converter.

Storage

Storing time series data over long periods can lead to high disk usage. Fortunately, I came across RRDtool (round-robin-database tool) - http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/ when I installed a monitoring solution for a FEM simulation server cluster and its UPS some time ago.

RRDtool stores data in a circular buffer so that its file size remains constant over time. However, older data will be overwritten after some time. The idea is to store the data in so-called round-robin archives with a consolidation function applied in order to keep the interesting properties. In my special application, the following archive sizes are used:

•     10080 x 1 minute samples for 7 days
•     11760 x 5 minute maximum & average values for 40 days, 20 hours
•     4704 x 30 minute maximum & average values for 98 days
•     2604 x 2 hour maximum & average values for ~ 7.2 months
•     2678 x 1 day maximum & average values for ~ 7.3 years

This gives plenty of storage with a reasonable file size of roughly 420 kB per data series.

Presentation

To ease the data presentation and acquisition, cacti http://www.cacti.net/ is used. This web-based application (favorable a Linux web server + PHP and MySQL required) is based on the RRDtool and provides Data Input Methods and Graph Templates as well as a nice graphical user interface to view the recorded data. Cacti primarily supports data acquisition via SNMP queries, but the power converter does not provide such interface. However, custom scripts can also be used.

Acquisition

Therefore, a PHP script has been written to fetch the current web page of the power converter and a simple HTML DOM (document-object-model) parser http://sourceforge.net/projects/simplehtmldom was used to extract the required field values. The tools run on a 24/7 NAS server where a cron job invokes the cacti poller (and thus the script) once every minute.

Results

Data acquisition is now successfully running since about 1 month. The total power production from last week can be seen in the following figure. The light-blue area represents the power output of the smaller (5 kW) system and the stacked dark-blue area is the power output of the larger (9.8 kW) system. From the data series we can even infer on the weather – the figure indicates that is was sunny at the weekend, cloudy on Monday, Tuesday and Friday and rainy on Wednesday and Thursday.