ongoing

Non-intrusive load monitoring has the capability to change how consumers use energy.

Project Insights

  • €182,974

    Total Project Costs
  • 2 yr

    Project Duration
  • 2018

    Year Funded

Project Description

Many large energy users receive electricity from their supplier at medium or high voltage, and operate their own local low voltage power grid assets. Similar to the national power grid, these local grids can greatly benefit from smart grid innovations. We will use our custom grid monitoring technology to collect data on Trinity College's local grid over the course of 12 months. As well as gathering detailed information on power usage and quality over an entire year, this data will also allow us to develop analysis tools based on modern non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) algorithms to recognise usage patterns from different types of load. This will give Trinity's operations and maintenance staff an unprecedented view of energy use in the College. We believe this is one of the largest trials of this kind, serving Trinity's 25,000 staff and students, and 1,000,000 annual visitors. An energy saving of up to 5% may be possible as a result this project, which represents an annual value of up to €175,000 for Trinity College. The outcome of this project will be applicable to local grids serving a wide variety of consumers, from university campuses, to industrial facilities, hospitals, etc. We believe that NILM has the potential to uniquely visualise how energy is consumed and managed and so we will publish our results, recommendations, and lessons learned, so that similar projects can be replicated on other local grids around the country and abroad.

Project Details

Total Project Cost: €182,974

Funding Agency: SEAI

Year Funded: 2018

Lead Organisation: Trinity College Dublin

Igor Shvets

Lead Researcher