An active trend of research consists of understanding how electricity is used, namely for energy efficiency enforcement and
in-home activity tracking. The obvious and cheapest solution is to use an inconspicuous monitoring system. Through the use
of non-intrusive load monitoring systems, the signal from the aggregate consumption is captured, electrical significant features
are extracted and
... [Show full abstract] classified and the appliances that were consuming are identified. In order to obtain a precise identification
of the device, the main requirements are an electrical signature for each device and a proper classification method. The information
thus obtained identifies appliance’s usage and specific consumptions. This paper describes an on-going research aiming at
the development and simplification of techniques and algorithms for non-intrusive load monitoring systems (NILM). The first
steps in the implementation of a NILM system were already addressed, namely we are performing an extensive study on the characterization
of the appliance’s electrical signature. The proposed parameters for defining an efficient electrical signature are the step-changes
in the active and reactive power and the power factor.
