Tuesday 27 September 2016

A competition for energy disaggregation algorithms

Cross-posted from Jack Kelly's blog:

Now that I've (finally!) submitted my PhD thesis, I can focus on designing and implementing a competition for energy disaggregation algorithms. EDF Energy have kindly given me post-doc funding from now until the end of December 2016 to work on the NILM competition.

The broad plan is to first consult with the NILM community and create a specification for the NILM competition which works for everyone. Then I plan to implement a web application which can run the NILM competition.

Right now, I'm writing a survey on the design of a competition for energy disaggregation algorithms. The aim of the survey is to systematically collect feedback about the design of the competition. I plan to launch the survey on the morning of Friday (30th September). Before Friday, I'm really eager to hear feedback on the survey itself. For example: is the survey missing any vital questions? Do some questions not provide sufficient options? Do some questions not make sense?!

Please note that, prior to Friday, the aim is to get feedback on the design of the survey itself. So please don't actually submit any answers yet! I'll write another blog post when the survey is ready to accept answers.

It's probably best to provide feedback about the survey in public on the relevant thread on the Energy Disaggregation Google Group. If you want your feedback to be private then, by all means, email me directly at jack.kelly@imperial.ac.uk!

And please do get in touch if you have feedback on any aspect of the proposed NILM competition.

Monday 19 September 2016

Last chance to register to EPRI EU NILM 2016

We've added a few more spaces to EventBrite and extended the registration deadline until the 3rd October. Register now for your free space: http://www.nilm.eu/

Thursday 15 September 2016

Online NILM Communities

A number of online NILM communities have sprung up over the past couple of years, so in this post I've tried to list all those that I can remember. Please leave a comment if there are any I've missed!

Energy Disaggregation Google Group


This Google Group was set up by Jack Kelly back in January 2015. The group is open to join immediately, and members can post new topics to the group or reply to existing topics. At the time of writing, the group contains 35 threads covering a wide range of topics, including data sets, conferences, job postings and appliance modelling.

NILM Workshop LinkedIn Group


This LinkedIn group was originally set up by our friends at Green Running in 2015 to facilitate networking between attendees of the 2015 EU NILM workshop. The group currently boasts 72 members, and we'll definitely be encouraging attendees of the upcoming 2016 workshop to join the community.

Conduit NILM Users Group


This Conduit Community was set up by PNNL in August 2015 as an online resource to support their open monthly calls aiming to produce a standardised NILM evaluation protocol. I've previously written posts about the outcomes of the first and second conference calls, their decision to develop a data-driven protocol, and also their recent vendor survey.

NILM Wiki


This wiki was set up by a collaboration between Jack Kelly and Green Running in an effort to build a community-driven collection of NILM knowledge. The wiki currently includes pages covering NILM data sets, common appliance power demands and existing NILM companies, although new contributions are encouraged!