Monday 20 February 2017

Interesting (to me anyway!) Appliance Signatures and Consumption

This is a graph from the Owl Intuition device I have just attached to my Owl transmitter. The data is from a clamp on to the feed cable to my electricity meter.
I linked the Owl transmitter to the Intuition receiver plugged into a Devolo broadband repeater. My broadband routers are 20 metres and around 3 metres of cob wall away from the transmitter, so no chance of a direct link!
I can now read the real-time data anywhere with an internet connection.
The graph starts at around 10:12 on 20th Feb and runs for two hours.
The initial base load is around 350 Watts, which is with two routers, TV aerial amplifiers, lights, and assorted fridges and freezers on. I am not proud of this level of base consumption!
The first sharp peak is an electric kettle, on for around one minute. The smoothing in the Owl software makes it look longer.
The subsequent long peak and smaller ones around every ten minutes are the washing machine.
It makes disaggregation (identifying demand from specific appliances) look fairly easy - but in practice it is not as easy as it looks, as several companies are discovering.

No comments:

Post a Comment