Electricity consumption pattern disaggregation based on user utilization factor

Abstract

Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring (NIALM) technique has been studied intensively by many researchers to estimate the electricity consumption of each appliance in a monitored building. However, the method requires a detailed, secondby- second power consumption data which is commonly not available without the use of high specification energy meter. The common energy meter used in buildings can only capture low frequency data such as kWh for every thirty minutes. This thesis proposes a bottom-up approach for disaggregating kWh consumption of a building. The relationship between the load profile of a building and electricity usage pattern of the occupants were studied and analysed. From the findings, a method based on utilization factor that relates user usage pattern and kWh electricity consumption was proposed to perform load disaggregation. The method was applied on the practical kWh profile data of electricity consumption of Block P19a, Fakulti Kejuruteraan Elektrik, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. The disaggregated kWh consumption results for air-conditioning and lighting system were validated with the actual kWh consumption recorded at the respective branch circuits of the building. Results from the analysis showed that the proposed method can be used to disaggregate energy consumption of a commercial building into air-conditioning and lighting systems. The proposed method could be extended to disaggregate the energy consumption for different areas of the building.