NILM techniques for intelligent home energy management and ambient assisted living: a review

The ongoing deployment of smart meters and different commercial devices has made electricity disaggregation feasible in buildings and households, based on a single measure of the current and, sometimes, of the voltage. Energy disaggregation is intended to separate the total power consumption into specific appliance loads, which can be achieved by applying Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) techniques with a minimum invasion of privacy. NILM techniques are becoming more and more widespread in recent years, as a consequence of the interest companies and consumers have in efficient energy consumption and management. This work presents a detailed review of NILM methods, focusing particularly on recent proposals and their applications, particularly in the areas of Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), where the ability to determine the on/off status of certain devices can provide key information for making further decisions. As well as complementing previous reviews on the NILM field and providing a discussion of the applications of NILM in HEMS and AAL, this paper provides guidelines for future research in these topics.Agência financiadora: Programa Operacional Portugal 2020 and Programa Operacional Regional do Algarve 01/SAICT/2018/39578 Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia through IDMEC, under LAETA: SFRH/BSAB/142998/2018 SFRH/BSAB/142997/2018 UID/EMS/50022/2019 Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La-Mancha, Spain: SBPLY/17/180501/000392 Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (SOC-PLC project): TEC2015-64835-C3-2-R MINECO/FEDERinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Real-life performance of protocol combinations for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks today are used for many and diverse applications like nature monitoring, or process and wireless building automation. However, due to the limited access to large testbeds and the lack of benchmarking standards, the real-life evaluation of network protocols and their combinations remains mostly unaddressed in current literature. To shed further light upon this matter, this paper presents a thorough experimental performance analysis of six protocol combinations for TinyOS. During these protocol assessments, our research showed that the real-life performance often differs substantially from the expectations. Moreover, we found that combining protocols is far from trivial, as individual network protocols may perform very different in combination with other protocols. The results of our research emphasize the necessity of a flexible generic benchmarking framework, powerful enough to evaluate and compare network protocols and their combinations in different use cases

Ancillary Services in Hybrid AC/DC Low Voltage Distribution Networks

In the last decade, distribution systems are experiencing a drastic transformation with the advent of new technologies. In fact, distribution networks are no longer passive systems, considering the current integration rates of new agents such as distributed generation, electrical vehicles and energy storage, which are greatly influencing the way these systems are operated. In addition, the intrinsic DC nature of these components, interfaced to the AC system through power electronics converters, is unlocking the possibility for new distribution topologies based on AC/DC networks. This paper analyzes the evolution of AC distribution systems, the advantages of AC/DC hybrid arrangements and the active role that the new distributed agents may play in the upcoming decarbonized paradigm by providing different ancillary services.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad ENE2017-84813-RUnión Europea (Programa Horizonte 2020) 76409