Disambiguating household energy-harvesting energy meter data streams.

Obtaining a detailed, whole-house breakdown of energy usage would allow for homeowners to better understand their energy consumption and opportunities for energy savings. Current solutions are either too course-grained, too difficult to deploy, not networked, or offer incomplete coverage of hard to meter items, such as ceiling lights. We demonstrate a wirelessly networked, energy-harvesting power metering system that draws zero standby power and is power proportional to the load it is metering. The system is comprised of three different meters: one for plugged in loads, one for panel level circuits, and one for hard to sense loads, such as ceiling lights. Each meter harvests energy proportionally to the load its measuring and powers a sensor node intermittently. At each activation the node increments a counter and periodically the node transmits a wireless packet containing that counter. Because the activation rate is proportional to the power draw of the load, the packet receiver can determine the power of the load based on the wakeup rate. Together, these sensors create multiple data streams which are aggregated by a receiver. When combined with a calibrated meter that measures total household power, our system can iteratively determine the contributions of each load to the total power usage, allowing users to gain a broad yet detailed view of their energy consumption and costs.