A versatile, low-cost monitoring device suitable for non-intrusive load monitoring research purposes

Abstract

Energy systems monitoring is a key factor in reducing global energy consumption. Although intrusive approaches can be adopted, Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM), which targets estimation of individual-appliance consumption from aggregated electricity measurements, is the main choice for retrofitting the plethora of non-smart electrical installations. Contemporary NILM requirements include high-frequency power-line sampling, efficient disaggregation algorithms that can, potentially, run locally, on the monitoring device, to offload the remote fog/cloud infrastructure, and various open datasets to allow the development of such algorithms. Towards all these directions, in this paper, a versatile monitoring device to support NILM research is presented. It offers high sampling frequency, sufficiency of local resources, and has been designed to be used in different environments (residential, commercial, industrial). Actually, it was deployed in all these environments, with multiple copies of it being used in two different industrial facilities for over two years. The developed device’s cost has been kept low, its accuracy has been experimentally verified to be sufficiently high, while its key hardware characteristics, in the context of NILM research, compare favorably with those of other devices in the literature. Along with the device, a residential, high-frequency dataset is also presented and made publicly available.

Keywords

• Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM)
• Monitoring devices
• Versatile device
• NILM datasets