Technique for indirect analysis of domestic

power consumers based on power pattern
recognition for smart energy metering

N. Nikolaev*, Y. Rangelov*, V. Valchev** and A. Marinov**

* Technical University of Varna/Department “Electric Power Engineering”, Varna, Bulgaria
**
Technical University of Varna/Department “Electronics and Microelectronics”, Varna, Bulgaria
n.nikolaev@tu-varna.bg; y.rangelov@tu-varna.bg; vencivalchev@hotmail.com; a.marinov@tu-varna.bg

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I. INTRODUCTION
Over the last decade, increasing attention has been
paid to energy efficiency, not only in industry but also in
households. The fast growing economies demand higher
amounts of energy. Still fossil fuels are dominant source
in the electric power production. However the EU has set
frames to ensure the displacement of these non eco fuels
by technologies based on renewable energy sources.
The roadmap for the energy sector development
forecasts that big share of the energy needed to supply the
households will be produced by their own photovoltaic,
wind or other renewable energy installations. Along with
the transition to local (distributed) power generation, the
energy consumption efficiency of the households has to be
increased. A fundamental problem for the domestic
consumers is to identify the energy consumption of each
electric appliance. The availability of this information
could allow the users to improve the efficiency. The
recent years’ research is focused on the development of a
central measurement device, which is able to recognize
the devices plugged in the mains electricity.
Reference [1] presents an algorithm for indirect
recognition of the devices plugged into the domestic
electrical installation. The algorithm is based on the
Matrix Pencil Method. A comparison of three controlling
methods – k Nearest Neighbor, Naive Bayes and Support
Bulgarian scientific fund
Vector Machine is presented.
Similar algorithm able to adapt itself to devices for
which the system has not been trained is proposed in [2].
In [3] an algorithm for indirect device recognition, based
on neural networks and electrical current harmonics is
presented. Other methods for nonintrusive domestic load
monitoring are available in [4-6].
The current contribution presents a new algorithm for
nonintrusive indirect recognition of the appliances
powered by the domestic mains electricity. The algorithm
detects deviations in the real power flowing through the
main cable which supplies the household. Then based on
particular power signatures and a fuzzy logic controller
the switched appliance is determined. The presented
simulation results prove its stability in recognition of most
of the “passive” appliances which form the biggest part of
the monthly electricity bill.
The paper continues with a brief description of the
simulation circuit, which is subject to test of the
algorithm. The proposed algorithm along with the
simulation results are presented in section III. The
conclusions are drawn in section IV.
II. METHODOLOGY
The simulated circuit is shown on Fig. 1. The voltage
source supplying the house hold along with its internal
impedance are designated as V S  Z S . The impedance
reflects the voltage drop due to the loading of the
electrical circuit.
The measurement acquisition system includes an
instantaneous current and voltage recorders. They are
connected next to the voltage source in order to measure
Figure 1. Simulated circuit

971
the total current of the household. The measured current
and voltage instantaneous values are recorded and fed to
the recognition algorithm.
During the simulation the appliances designated as RL
Load are switched ‘on’ and ‘off’. Fig. 2 shows a simulated
scenario with consecutively switched appliances with
three different power ratings - 865 W, 414 W and 112 W
respectively.
Figure 2. Instantaneous current simulating the switching of three
appliances
III. ALGORITHM FOR INDIRECT RECOGNITION OF THE
SWITCHED DOMESTIC ALLPLIANCES
The structure diagram of the algorithm for indirect
recognition of electrical appliances is depicted in Fig. 3.
The required input data is obtained from the data
acquisition system which measures the instantaneous
current and voltage values. After a dedicated signal
processing, the data (power signature) is fed to the device
recognition block, which determines the switched
appliance.
Figure 3. General structure diagram of the recognition algorithm
A. Control Block
The control block detects the events of switching the
electrical appliances. Its structure diagram is shown in
Fig. 4. The input signal is the measured instantaneous
current. Then its mean value is calculated. During a
normal operation (no switching of devices) the current
mean value deviates around zero. However, a quickly
decaying impulse appears at a moment of device
switching. This impulse is differentiated and filtrated by
the next sub-block. Then its absolute value is determined
in order to make the control sensitive to both ‘on’ and
‘off’ events. When an event occurs the signal level
increases above the threshold of the relay block. The
raising pulse on the output of the relay triggers the next
block, which creates a single rectangular output signal
with a length of exactly 0.2 sec.
The interested reader can find more information about
modelling of differentiating and filtering functions by
972
Laplace transformation in [7], or in any other book
dedicated to control theory.
Figure 4. Structure diagram of the control block
B. Block for Voltage Magnitude Compensation
Fig. 5 shows the diagram of the voltage magnitude
compensation block. Its purpose is to correct the measured
voltage when it is different from the nominal. This is
imposed by the fact that the heating appliances have a
quadratic power-voltage dependence:
P U2 / R (1)
Therefore, to prevent the influence of the power
deviation on the signal processing, the following
compensation is done:
2
§V ·
Vcorr ~ V ˜ ¨ nom ¸ (2)
© Vrms ¹
In other words each instantaneous value of the voltage
is multiplied by the squared ratio of the nominal and the
measured rms values of the voltage. The corrected
instantaneous voltage value is then fed to the signal
processing block. This compensation method was
originally proposed in [8].
The voltage waveform of the source used in the
simulation is shown in Fig. 6. The algorithm is tested with
a voltage magnitude deviation of 13 V and a 1 sec period.
Moreover, 5 % of 3rd and 5th harmonics are added.
Figure 5. Voltage magnitude compensation block
C. Signal Processing Block
Figure 6. Waveform of the simulated voltage source
The structure diagram of the signal processing block is
depicted in Fig. 7. The input signals are the instantaneous
current and the corrected instantaneous voltage. The
normalized instantaneous value of the power is obtained
by the product of this two signals. After that, the mean
value (the averaging period is 1/f Fund ) gives the value of
the normalized real power. The normalized real power for
the simulated circuit is shown in Fig. 8 (a).
In order to distinguish the moment of device switching
and the steady-state of the circuit the active power is fed
through the transfer function TF. This function
differentiates and filtrates the input signal. The output of
the TF is presented in Fig. 8 (b). This plot shows that
when the circuit is in a steady-state the output signal is
nearly zero. Further on, the filter smoothens the fast signal
deviations originating from the differentiation.
Figure 7. Signal Processing Block
Figure 8. Normalized active power and (b) the signal obtained after its
differentiation and filtration
When the rectangular 0.2 sec long impulse appears,
the logical Switch turns into ‘ON’ position and feeds the
output signal of the TF to the integrator. After 0.2 sec,
when the impulse turns from logical true to false, the
integrator is restarted and the logic Switch is turned back
to ‘OFF’ position. As a result an impulse with particular
peak value appears on the output of the integrator. This
peak value is the power signature which is unique for each
appliance. The integrator output signal from the
simulation is presented in Fig. 9. This plot shows that
despite the voltage magnitude deviation, the peak value
for the same device remains unchanged. However, if there
is no voltage magnitude compensation the power signature
will be different every time.
D. Device Recognition Block
Figure 9. Output of the signal processing block (power signatures)
973
The device recognition block is depicted in Fig. 10.
This block uses the power signature provided by the signal
processing block. The signature value is fed in the
Sample/Hold block which is synchronized by the control
block to provide as an output only the peak value of the
power signature. This is important in order to ensure
correct operation of the Fuzzy logic controller. Otherwise,
if all values of the signal processing output are fed into the
Fuzzy logic controller the output will provide fake results.
Two input membership functions are defined for each
device, respectively for ‘on’ and ‘off’ state. Fig. 11 shows
the input membership functions for the presented
simulation with three devices. The probability distribution
functions are defined as triangular. The tip of the triangle
defines the value most likely to be observed when a
device is switched. The signal values spanned by the
triangle are set as ±10 % from the tip value.
Figure 10. Device recognition block
Figure 11. Input membership functions
Figure 12. Outputs membership functions
A membership function is defined for each output. The
Fuzzy logic controller implemented in the simulation has
two outputs for each device – one output for turning the
device ‘on’ and another one for turning the device ‘off’.
For all outputs the membership function is the same (see
Fig. 12).
The rules defining the logical relation between the
inputs and the outputs of the Fuzzy logic controller are the
following:
x ,I,QSXWLV Dev_1_ON WKHQ (Dev_1_ON is MF_out)
DQG (Dev_1_OFF is not MF_out) DQG (Dev_2_ON
is not MF_out) DQG (Dev_2_OFF is not MF_out)
DQG (Dev_3_ON is not MF_out) DQG (Dev_3_OFF
is not MF_out)
x ,I ,QSXW LV Dev_1_OFF WKHQ (Dev_1_ON is not
MF_out) DQG (Dev 1 OFF is MF_out) DQG
(Dev_2_ON is not MF_out) DQG (Dev_2_OFF is not
MF_out) DQG (Dev_3_ON is not MF_out) DQG
(Dev_3_OFF is not MF_out)
x ,I ,QSXW LV Dev_2_ON WKHQ (Dev_1_ON is not
MF_out) DQG (Dev_1_OFF is not MF_out) DQG
(Dev_2_ON is MF_out) DQG (Dev_2_OFF is not
MF_out) DQG (Dev_3_ON is not MF_out) DQG
(Dev_3_OFF is not MF_out)
x ,I ,QSXW LV Dev_2_OFF WKHQ (Dev_1_ON is not
MF_out) DQG (Dev_1_OFF is not MF_out) DQG
(Dev_2_ON is not MF_out) DQG (Dev_2_OFF is
MF_out) DQG (Dev_3_ON is not MF_out) DQG
(Dev_3_OFF is not MF_out)
x ,I ,QSXW LV Dev_3_ON WKHQ (Dev_1_ON is not
MF_out) DQG (Dev_1_OFF is not MF_out) DQG
(Dev_2_ON is not MF_out) DQG (Dev_2_OFF is not
MF_out) DQG (Dev_3_ON is MF_out) DQG
(Dev_3_OFF is not MF_out)
x ,I ,QSXW LV Dev_3_OFF WKHQ (Dev_1_ON is not
MF_out) DQG (Dev_1_OFF is not MF_out) DQG
(Dev_2_ON is not MF_out) DQG (Dev_2_OFF is not
MF_out) DQG (Dev_3_ON is not MF_out) DQG
(Dev_3_OFF is MF_out)
The settings of the Fuzzy logic controller are the
following:
x Mamdani system:
x And method – min
x Or method – probor
x Implication – prod
x Aggregation – max
x Defuzzification – lom
Depending on the input value, the Fuzzy logic
controller sets a logical true to only one of the outputs at a
time. As already mentioned there are two outputs for each
device which are connected to a RS flip-flop (one per
device). The output of the flip-flop is logical true if the
device is recognized as turned-on and is logical false if
recognized as turned-off. The outputs for the states of the
three devices from the simulation are shown in Fig. 13.
These output values are then used to evaluate the
individual consumption of the devices.
E. Individual Consumption Data Records
After the information for each device state (‘on’ or
‘off’, see Fig. 13) is available an information for their
individual consumption is collected. For a given period of
time the individual consumption is evaluated by the
following integral function:
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Figure 13. Output of the device recognition block
end of
period ª §V ·
2
º
Edevice ³
0
« state ˜ ¨ rms ¸ ˜ Pnom » ˜ dt
«¬ © Vnom ¹ »¼
(3)
As explained in section III.B. the power-voltage
dependence is quadratic in general. Therefore the nominal
power of the device is corrected with the squared ratio
between the measured rms and the nominal voltage value.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
The developed algorithm for indirect recognition of
the switched domestic appliances is stable despite of the
disturbances of the power supply (voltage magnitude
deviation and presence of harmonics). With its help most
of the “passive” appliances, such as boilers, electrical
heaters, cookers, lighting bulbs and others are identified.
Based on that a database with their individual
consumption is collected, providing the costumers with
useful information for their energy expenses on each
device.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This paper is prepared in the frames of Project
MU03/164 - “Intelligent systems for energy management
and control of consumer expenses”, Ministry of
Education Youth and Science, Bulgarian National
Science Fund.
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