Energy

I have several interests in the field of energy:

• Energy Monitoring - I started monitoring the energy consumption of my home several years ago with an OwlCM160 monitor. after a few months I realised that the 6 second measurement granularity meant appliance transitions were overlapping a lot. So the main criterion for my next monitor the Onzo ED01013 was its 1 second granularity. After a couple more years of collecting data and attempting to analyse it by writing my own code SmartPower and SmartPowerLite, I worked out that someone else must have done this before, which is when I discovered the NILMTK (Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring Tool Kit) and its supporting community. Later I realised that without some serious AI support I wasn't going to successfully disaggregate data for the whole house, so I persuaded my son to develop a multichannel monitor so I could monitor each circuit individually.
• Energy Analysis (Disaggregation) see mind maps
• Green Energy generation and storage - such as solar photovoltaic. There is a wealth of material out there on this topic but I found Adam Welch's youtube channel (solar shed) a good introduction. I am still thinking about this, because I think grid tied solar isn't the whole answer, there would need to be battery storage. The trouble is I think there is a technology switch from Lead Acid to Lithium technologies going on at the moment (2018). But it's still early days and the new batteries are ridiculously expensive at the moment, hopefully this will change in the next couple of years.
• Hybrid and fully electric vehicles - My wife has taken the plunge on this with a hybrid Toyota Auris this has improved greatly since her first hybrid a Toyota Prius bought 7 years ago. I would like to go fully electric, but like many others I suffer from range anxiety! However things are looking up with the Tesla model 3 disrupting the market, I suspect the next couple of years will prove interesting. It is also good to know that the charging infrastructure is rolling out see ZAP MAP.