Activity Supervision Tool Using Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring Systems

Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring System (NILM) is a collection of techniques and technologies aiming to disaggregate the energy consumption from smart meters to device level consumption. This disaggregation allows us to supervise the activity related to particular devices (e.g. machines in factories or appliances in houses) without intrusiveness along the time. Furthermore, NILM systems enable large scale deployment and low cost expenses. In this paper, we present a new activity monitoring approach based on the use of a NILM system, firstly developed for elderly people activity monitoring at home, which could be potentially applicable to factory automation to supervise the activity of a particular machine for maintenance or other purposes. Our approach monitors the activity of many appliances in households and rates the total activity in terms of "normality" in a predetermined period of time, hence, deviations in the pattern can be detected.