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2010-11 Seminars Towards Energy-Aware Facilities: Inferring Appliance-Level Consumption Prof. Mario Berges
Abstract Studies have shown that by providing building occupants with real-time energy use feedback, even at the aggregate level, savings of up to 10-15% may be achieved. Larger savings are potentially achievable if more detailed data were available not only to the user but also to automated building control systems or to electricity suppliers, allowing them to reward peak-shifting loads or subsidize equipment upgrades. However, the granularity of the power consumption data is typically proportional to the price of the solution required to obtain it. Nevertheless, there are ways to circumvent this relationship and this is the main topic of my work. Specifically, my research is on enabling awareness of the electricity consumption of buildings by exploiting low-cost data streams for high-value information, particularly through the use of signal processing tools and machine learning techniques. I envision a scenario where facilities can perform inference and automatically learn from different data sources in the building, in order to provide relevant and specific feedback targeted at influencing behavior and reducing consumption. In this talk I will present some of the work I have been doing towards this goal. In particular, I will present a Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring prototype system that we have developed and installed in four buildings around Pittsburgh, along with preliminary results and early findings from our deployments. I will also describe some of the possible uses of appliance-level data and discuss future research directions.
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