Tracking energy consumptions of home appliances using electrical signature data

Smart meter is probably the most visible symbol of the future smart grid. Industry hopes that more energy conservation behaviors will be induced if customers can access their own energy data from the smart meters. However, existing smart meters are not sufficient for providing households with the feedback needed to achieve effective energy saving. This paper presents techniques that have the potential to make the smart meters truly smart in term of metering capability - the tracking of the energy consumptions of home appliances. The electrical signatures of each home appliance such as harmonics and transients play a significant role for this idea, as many appliances inject unique disturbances into power system. In addition to demonstrating a potential application of the smart meters, this paper shows that power disturbances can have positive values and useful information can be extracted from them. This represents a new direction for power quality research.