Mario Bergés (CMU) and Computing Innovation Fellow Zico Kolter (MIT) are co-organizing the first International Workshop on Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring, to be held on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University on May 7th. With support from Bosch Research, the workshop will provide a forum to unite researchers working on the topic of energy disaggregation, particularly on sensing and/or algorithms aspects. The workshop will review the main types of approaches that have been explored to date, and discuss possible paths forward. Key foci will include the growing need for standardized datasets and performance metrics that can allow the field to move forward, as well as possible areas of collaboration among research groups from multiple disciplines.

According to the workshop website:

Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM), also referred to as Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring (NIALM) or more generally electricity disaggregation, is the name given to a set of techniques used to obtain estimates of the electrical consumption of individual appliances from measurements of voltage and/or current taken at a limited number of locations of the power distirbution system in a building [more following the link].

 

The original idea was developed by George Hart and other researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1980s, but recent technological advancements in hardware costs, capabilities and proliferation (e.g., smart meters) as well as novel algorithms and an overall increased interest in improving the electrical grid have motivated a renewed interest in this topic from industry and academic researchers around the world.

 

The mission of this workshop is to create a forum that can unite all the researchers that are working on the topic of energy disaggregation. There are currently no specialized conferences or workshops dedicated to this topic, and the contributions (which have been increasing in the past 5 years) come from researchers in a wide variety of fields and from different backgrounds.

Specific details of the agenda are still being fleshed out, but, according to the organizers:

The current proposal is to start with a light lunch at noon, followed by three sessions of an invited speaker and spotlight talks, and ending with a panel/discussion. Each of the three sessions will be focused on one type of approach to the disaggregation problem (e.g., event-based, high-frequency noise, etc.). There will be a dinner for those who want to stay and participate in the Pennsylvania Smarter Infrastructure Incubator (PSII) symposium that will take place the next day.

If you are interested in presenting at the workshop, you may submit a two-page abstract along with a poster and/or a five-minute presentation. Abstract submissions are due by April 22nd.

If you wish to attend, you may register for the event here.

To learn more, check out the workshop website.

And be sure to review the report of a February 2011 Computing Community Consortium (CCC)/National Science Foundation (NSF) workshop exploring the many roles of information science and engineering in sustainability.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)