Energy feedback enabled by load disaggregation

Motivated by recent advances in load disaggregation, we discuss innovative tools for understanding household appliance energy consumption and patterns of appliance use for energy feedback generation, developed as part of the EPSRC REFIT project. We show how analytical tools applied on disaggregated data can lead to a variety of energy feedback ranging from appliance usage patterns analysis, appliance upgrade/retrofit advice, opportunities for load shifting and assessing tariff suitability, and understanding household routines through time use and energy consumption studies of daily activities in the home, such as cooking or laundering. Our analysis is based on the publicly-available REFIT electrical measurements dataset that was populated by a 2-year longitudinal study in UK houses and is supplemented by qualitative data. Namely, we collected electricity data, aggregate data and individual appliance consumption, with an 8-second sampling rate for active power, similar to that provided by a Consumer Access Device that reads measurements from a smart meter directly. This implies that our feedback generation approaches could potentially be used in conjunction with smart meters that will be present in all UK homes by 2020. Furthermore, we summarise the findings collected during exit interviews from the test households about the usefulness of smart metering and energy feedback.