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Improved Non-Intrusive Identification Technique of Electrical Appliances For A Smart Residential System
Improved Non-Intrusive Identification Technique of Electrical Appliances For A Smart Residential System
Improved Non-Intrusive Identification Technique of Electrical Appliances For A Smart Residential System
Research Article
Abstract: Electrical load monitoring techniques are valuable to consumer site for energy saving, permitting reduction in
electricity costs. Nowadays, smart grid technology incorporates advanced load monitoring applications, enabling efficient
consumption of electrical energy. Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) is a moderately new practice to identify the power
consumption of individual appliances of a consumer from the aggregated household at a single point of measurement. In this
study, an improved NILM technique is proposed by using a shunt passive filter installed at the source side of any residential
complex. The proposed method can be realised in two steps. The first step is to determine the harmonic impedance at the load
side for different groups of loads for a single household. The second step is to implement a fuzzy rule-based approach for
identification of different loads at the consumer end. Suitable simulations backed by experiments are demonstrated in this study
to validate the viability of the proposed methodology.
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washing machine etc. Some of them can also be classified into
predominantly inductive loads. Electronic appliances include
chargers, personal computers, scanners, fax equipment etc. In this
paper, a typical domestic residential load such as variable speed
drive (VSD) load, a computer, a fan with an electronic regulator
and dimming lamps are used for the study.
4 Proposed scheme
In the proposed load segregation technique, the harmonic
impedances of domestic loads are computed, and the same data is
fed to a fuzzy rule base for identification purposes. Majority of the
techniques rely on current harmonics [12], which can lead to lower
sensitivity and misjudgement at the source end for identification of
load types. The same can be avoided if harmonic impedance is
measured at the load premises as the computed impedance has a
wider variation. In order to reduce injected harmonics introduced
by various power electronics loads, e.g. a light dimmer, regulator,
Fig. 1 Typical domestic household system considered computer etc., power filters of suitable configuration are normally
used for such purposes. For computation of harmonic impedance of
which is not suitable for smart metering purposes. An appliances individual load groups, a passive shunt filter is considered here at
classification technique is also presented using the ON/OFF event the entry point of the household system adjacent to the smart
of multiple loads [23, 27, 29]. Better results can be achieved for metre. The proposed technique is not dependent on heavy training
conventional load monitoring by using sensors for each appliance or learning processes like the majority of existing NILM
but are impractical due to economic reasons. In this context, the techniques [2].
NILM method is most suitable, where only a set of current and Typical domestic electrical loads are considered for the
voltage sensors can monitor the load activities. It also involves proposed system, which are used extensively in residential
lower cost and requires less space for installation. buildings as well as small commercial systems. VSD is one such
In this paper, a method for load disaggregation for a residential load widely used in lifts and hoists in residences. Also, television
system is adopted using a passive shunt filter along with suitable and computer loads are common for the residential sector and are
fuzzy rule base. Different combinations of residential loads are taken into consideration for the proposed study. In the present
considered, each with different individual energy consumption. In study, the voltage and current data at the load end at the point of
this proposed method of load identification, system voltage and common coupling (PCC) is taken with and without a filter and
current data are collected at the entry point of the connected smart compared along with other existing technique for the proposed
metre. The calculated harmonic load impedance is used here as a filter-based technique.
parameter for load identification. A tuned passive shunt filter is Fig. 2a describes the schematic representation of a residential
used in the proposed technique, which helps in increasing the system without a filter. The current and voltage data is collected
variation of this harmonic load impedance, thereby helping in using sensors at the entry point (PCC), and harmonic impedance is
easier load identification. The passive filter also helps in mitigation calculated, which is shown in Table 1. It is observed that with
of source-side current harmonics. The proposed method is different combination of loads, a notable change is visible only for
implemented in a laboratory setup, compared with existing the fundamental impedance, whereas changes in other harmonics
techniques and found suitable for residential applications. are almost negligible. Moreover, categorisation of load with
variation of input impedance can be difficult if no intelligent
algorithm is employed as the load combinations can be many.
2 Some preliminary classifications of appliances
The per-phase equivalent circuit of residential system is shown
In the NILM method, domestic appliances are classified into in Fig. 2b. The equivalent harmonic impedance from metre side
several categories. Some of them can be described as follows: can be calculated as
696 IET Gener. Transm. Distrib., 2019, Vol. 13 Iss. 5, pp. 695-702
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frequency or any near tuned frequency, the harmonic current will frequency current component is of low value and slightly leading
circulate through the filter circuit without disturbing the source. in order to avoid the extra loading of the input wires or cables.
This will protect the source from injected harmonic and provide The simplified schematic diagram for the proposed scheme is
lower harmonic impedance near resonance frequency if measured shown in Fig. 3a, and the per-phase equivalent circuit for the
after the filter. This property is utilised here for accurate load system is shown in Fig. 3b. Harmonic voltage and currents can be
identification. obtained at the metre side after the filter by performing fast Fourier
In this paper, the passive shunt filter is tuned at 5th harmonic as transform from the measured variables. The harmonic impedances
it is the most prominent lower order injected harmonic by most of can be calculated using (1), and the same are shown in Table 2.
the non-linear loads [31]. The general expression of resonant From the table, it can be observed that there is a marked change in
frequency (Hz) at any harmonic order for the filter is given by the harmonic impedances (other than the tuned harmonic
impedance) for different groups of loads. This harmonic impedance
1 data can be used with an intelligent procedure such as fuzzy rule
fr = (2)
2πn LC base to segregate the different loads.
The most common lower order harmonic injected by non-linear
where n is the harmonic order. Thus, for selection of L and C, one loads is the 5th harmonic. Thus, in the proposed technique, the
commercially available value of C is considered and L can be filter is tuned at 5th harmonic. Now, the plot of filter impedance
calculated as and source impedance at different harmonics is shown in Fig. 4.
From the figure, it can be concluded that 5th harmonic impedance
1 is much lower for the filter. On the other hand, the fundamental and
L= (3) other higher order harmonic impedances for the filter are larger
4π 2 f r2n2C
compared to the source impedance. Thus, almost all of the 5th
harmonic current will be absorbed by the filter. The other higher
Since the filter is connected in parallel with the loads, the other
order harmonic currents will be partially absorbed. Thus, when the
important criterion of filter should be that its fundamental
filter is considered in the circuit, the change in harmonic
impedance will be significant for 5th, 7th and 11th orders where
both the impedances are comparable. This change will be
dependent on the magnitude and orders of the harmonics injected
by the load. Thus, for different loads, the change in harmonic
impedance will be different. This phenomenon is utilised in the
current technique for load identification.
Fig. 5 shows the variation of different harmonic impedances at
load side for different types of appliances. From the figure, it can
be observed that change in harmonic impedance data with filter has
more variations compared to the impedance without filter. The
harmonic impedance data obtained with filter are fed to the fuzzy
rule base for the proposed load monitoring technique. In the
residential system, 5th, 7th and 11th harmonics are the most
common for different types of loads; therefore 5th, 7th and 11th
harmonics are taken for analytical purpose [30]. In this paper, the
proposed NILM workflow diagram is shown in Fig. 6. The metre-
side aggregated electric signal is collected from the entry point of
the residence using current and voltage sensors. In this proposed
technique, electrical features of different loads, i.e. fundamental
voltage and current, and their harmonics are extracted by using fast
Fourier transform from the acquired accumulated data.
Following the selection of appliances and tuning parameter of
the filter, harmonic impedance calculation is conducted after the
filter at the load side using current and voltage harmonics data.
Finally, the fuzzy rule-based method sequentially checks the
harmonics impedance data and provides identification of different
electrical loads.
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Fig. 4 Variation of source impedance and filter impedance for different
harmonic orders
5.2 Defuzzification
Defuzzification is a technique to convert fuzzified value to a crisp
(i.e. single point) value for performing a specified task of the
system. In this proposed method, defuzzification was done by the
popular centre of gravity technique [33]. The defuzzified value
Fig. 3 Proposed electrical loads identification scheme for a residential
(Z*) is obtained by the following equation:
system
∫ zμ(z) dz
(a) Schematic diagram, (b) Per-phase equivalent circuit diagram Z∗ = (5)
∫ μ(z) dz
given by μA : x → [0, 1], x ∈ X, where x is the real number, X is the
universe of discloser and A is a subset of X [32, 33]. where µ(z) is the grade of membership function and z is the output
Fuzzification is a technique to convert crisp input data into variable. The output membership function lies between 0 and 1
fuzzy value using suitable membership function (MF) [32]. In the according to the fuzzy rule. The nomenclature of the output
present paper, triangular fuzzy membership function is used to membership is adopted using each possible combination of the
represent the two inputs (i.e. 7th and 11th harmonic impedances). electrical load acting of this proposed system. The name and the
The triangular MF is modelled by the following equation: corresponding symbol of these membership functions are described
in Table 3.
0, u ≤ a
U−a 6 Simulation and experiential results
,a < U ≤ b
b−a The proposed method is validated by simulations backed by
A(U; a, b, c) = (4)
c−U experimental case studies conducted in this segment. The
,b < U ≤ c simulations are carried out using MATLAB/Simulink R2016a
c−b
0, U > c platform. Experimental studies are then performed on a suitable
laboratory prototype.
The three non-smart domestic appliances considered in the
where a and c signify the right and left corner points of the fuzzy
present simulation and experimental studies are VSD, computer
set and b is the peak point of the membership function. Based on
and light dimming load. First, the voltage and current waveforms
the fuzzy sets, the notion of linguistic variable is also introduced in
for different combination of appliances are studied.
[32, 33]. Linguistic variable is a variable whose values are
The proposed technique does not need to identify the exact
represented in words or sentences in a natural or artificial language.
current and voltage patterns for each appliance, but FFT of the
In this proposed scheme, the inputs are fuzzified into three
waveforms are used for determining the harmonic impedances of
triangular-shaped membership functions, viz. low (L), medium (M)
the individual loads. The experimental setup consists of three
and high (H), respectively, as shown in Fig. 7. As per the analysis
loads, a VSD consisting of a rectifier, an inverter and an induction
for 5th harmonic tuned filter, the combination of other dominant
motor. In the present case, an induction motor of 1.25 hp is used
harmonics 7th and 11th is preferred as selected input membership
with VSD for experimental purposes. Additionally, a computer
functions. The range of the input membership function is chosen
load and a 100 W dimming light connected between phase A and
based on the harmonic impedances collected at the load side, as
neutral are considered for the system. The input signals are
shown in Table 2. In this proposed technique, seven load
sampled at a rate of 2 kHz for the present case. Fig. 8 shows the
combinations are considered, as shown in Table 3.
different combinations of load current signatures obtained from the
study. Initially, the VSD is running at rated load, and respective
voltage and current waveforms are shown in the first trace of
Fig. 8.
Table 2 Harmonics impedance of different loads groups at the entry point of residential house after shunt passive filter is
connected
Order of harmonics VSD VSD and VSD, computer and VSD and light Light dimmer and Light dimmer Computer
computer light dimmer dimmer computer
1st 467.36 162.43 84.13 118.74 105.78 162.52 310
3rd 67.42 85.08 71.78 86.47 83.41 83.74 83.53
5th 10.28 7.31 11.59 12.38 35.04 35.29 34.65
7th 69 72 67 91.1 85 111 107
9th 229 146.07 129.52 125.63 162 139.33 136.85
11th 207 118 148 203 177 200 165
13th 220.33 320 212.62 200.87 258 204 242
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Fig. 6 Workflow of the proposed NILM technique
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Fig. 9 Simulated harmonic current spectrum
(a) VSD, (b) Computer load, (c) Light dimmer load
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Table 4 Fuzzy logic output of different electrical loads or
groups of loads
Electrical load Membership index value of Defuzzified value
fuzzy output
NL 0–0.2 —
D 0.3 0.302
C 0.4 0.399
V 0.5 0.502
CD 0.6 0.594
VD 0.7 0.694
VC 0.8 0.794
VCD 0.9 0.903
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Table 6 Comparison of different load identification techniques
Identification BP- PSO- FCM SSOM- Subtractive PRS-based DWT- NSGA-II WT- Proposed Proposed
technique ANN based piloting based clustering technique based based based filter-based method
[28] BP-ANN PSO- method [25] [26] ML [18] [27] ML [17] method without
[28] based [24] filter
NFC [23]
overall 88.75 97.50 96.25 98.15 86 89.17 97.25 96.62 96.65 99.29 91.25
accuracy, %
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