Energy Channel 2.0

This project aims to improve the current Energy Channel (an application that displays Smart Meter energy usage data in a user-friendly graphic interface on the customer's TV) by integrating the Green Button initiative and adding social features. It is also intended to extend the current delivery channels beyond the set-top box by implementing a mobile app able to show the content of the Energy Channel in a smartphone. The new version of the Energy Channel aims to improve customer engagement level by adding social features. Mobile applications can greatly expand the range of location and time for audiences to access the channel. Moreover, incorporating the Green Button initiative will improve data retrieval, ensure credibility and reduce installation costs per customer by avoiding third party hardware and services.

Most consumers know little about their home energy consumption. Providing detailed, personalized actions for saving energy is a key feature of in-home energy displays, encouraging consumers to reduce consumption. However, studies have shown inconclusive results regarding the effectiveness of commercially-available in-home energy displays, possibly due to providing delayed feedback without an effective consumption breakdown. Research shows that real-time residential energy displays lead to better identification of actions that affect energy consumption, compared to delayed feedback after one hour or longer. Non-intrusive load monitoring is a well-known approach for measuring household energy consumption and automatically identifying individual plug loads. However, real-time disaggregation algorithms require high-resolution energy data and computational resources unavailable in most homes. Installing additional resources in homes to collect and analyze energy data would require a substantial investment and pose significant challenges. However, additional sources of information at home may enable feasible techniques to perform non-intrusive load monitoring. This report presents the implementation of a low-cost, real-time monitoring framework, called “Energy Channel” (EC), which is displayed on home televisions. The EC project was developed in collaboration with SCE. The solution collects energy data directly from the local smart meter, and the framework uses a Home Area Network (HAN) and a mobile application to collect additional data and perform non-intrusive load monitoring. The proposed solution compensates for a lack of additional sensors and high-computational resources by providing additional sources of information, including historical consumption data, consumer location, local weather, and house properties, and by enabling consumer input via smartphone. This report presents an overview of the framework, along with preliminary results of nonintrusive energy loads classified into predefined categories.