An interoperable tool-chain for energy monitoring applications

Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) is the disaggregation of the power consumption of individual appliances from agglomerated measurements taken from a single point of measure. The paper proposes a NILM methodology based on load signature analysis, and it then suggests that to deploy NILM in the large, a set of interoperable tools should support each stakeholder of the NILM value chain. This tool-chain is made interoperable by a shared domain model based on well-known ontologies, such as Saref and Schema. The paper shows that this approach enables smooth NILM-based industrial innovation, because the toolchain may be easily extended to provide capabilities such as predictive appliance maintenance, appliance aging understanding, fault detection and interaction with the utility companies. The paper proposes a NILM toolchain development road-map based on an interoperability platform named Arrowhead to increase the value proposition of the NILM device.