I-Corps: Smart Energy Analytic Disaggregation System

University Of California-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz CA

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to provide home owners with reliable, real-time appliance energy information and guidance to manage their electricity consumption more efficiently and to facilitate the transition to distributed renewable energy generation and local microgrids through a low cost electricity data acquisition and analytic device. A smart energy system relies on balancing various internal power demands in order to maximize efficiency and minimize cost to users. This technology offers a low-cost, easily-installed device that can be used in residential settings, allowing consumers to identify which appliances are operating at a particular time and the real-time cost of electricity consumption. It can provide real-time data to the residential customers in order to facilitate broader energy management of distributed installations. This I-Corps project is based on a smart energy analytic disaggregation system is built with open-source, embedded system composed of low-cost, off-the-shelf components, combining hardware and software. The system uses mathematical transformations to compress the data and machine-learning classification algorithms on the embedded processor to decompose building electric circuit load signals. Data are linked to appliance specific components by capturing and analyzing current and voltage data at a high sampling rate, differentiating among individual appliance signals, their harmonics, and unique signatures. The device has capacity for multiple sensors and can be updated continuously or daily via the existing internet infrastructure. The more devices and the longer it measures and analyzes, the better the algorithm becomes at appliance energy use identification.