Energy disaggregation using variational autoencoders

Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) is a technique that uses a single sensor to measure the total power consumption of a building. Using an energy disaggregation method, the consumption of individual appli-ances can be estimated from the aggregate measurement. Recent disaggregation algorithms have signif-icantly improved the performance of NILM systems. However, the generalization capability of these methods to different houses as well as the disaggregation of multi-state appliances are still major chal-lenges. In this paper we address these issues and propose an energy disaggregation approach based on the variational autoencoders framework. The probabilistic encoder makes this approach an efficient model for encoding information relevant to the reconstruction of the target appliance consumption. In particular, the proposed model accurately generates more complex load profiles, thus improving the power signal reconstruction of multi-state appliances. Moreover, its regularized latent space improves the generalization capabilities of the model across different houses. The proposed model is compared to state-of-the-art NILM approaches on the UK-DALE and REFIT datasets, and yields competitive results. The mean absolute error reduces by 18% on average across all appliances compared to the state-of-the -art. The F1-Score increases by more than 11%, showing improvements for the detection of the target appliance in the aggregate measurement. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper proposes an energy disaggregation approach based on variational autoencoders framework to improve the performance of non-intrusive load monitoring systems. The method significantly improves the generation of complex load profiles and the generalization capability of the model.