Cognition and Control for Demand Management: Sensors, Actuators and Web Services for Smart Consumers
Primary Information
Domain
Energy
Project No.
7863
Sanction and Project Initiation
Sanction No: F.No.3-18/2015-TS-TS-1
Sanction Date: 29/11/2016
Project Initiation date: 07/02/2017
Project Duration: 36
Partner Ministry/Agency/Industry
Ministry of Power
Role of partner:Ministry of Power is the providing 50% funding support, while Amplebit Energy Solutions Pvt Ltd helped us in understanding what problems are pertinent in the energy
Support from partner: Ministry of Power provided funding while Amplebit Energy Solutions was our consulting partner.
Principal Investigator
Anupama Kowli
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Host Institute
Co-PIs
Shreevardhan Soman
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Mukul Chandorkar
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Scope and Objectives
The overarching goal of the project is to provide technology solutions for enabling residential, commercial and industrial loads to participate in energy efficiency and demand response programs. A key idea behind the solution development is to collect meaningful information using basic sensing technology and process the same on suitable platforms to control end-use consumption. Specifically, it entails designing of low cost, energy efficient sensor nodes and data processing software platforms as well as devising of control mechanisms for demand management applications. Given that commercial building constitute a third of the electricity demand, and roughly half of commercial load can be typically attributed to air conditioning systems, the project will extensively focus on managing the air conditioning load. In particular, live test beds would be created on IIT Bombay campus for testing and validating the proposed solutions. Furthermore, a simulator capable of emulating an air conditioning load would be designed to investigate how different control strategies impact the load consumption. This would help ascertain the best way to participate in energy efficiency and/or demand response programs.
Deliverables
1. low cost and energy efficient sensor nodes for demand management applications
2. software platforms for processing and analyzing the sensor data
3. interactive web interfaces for collecting as well as displaying information
4. control algorithms for demand management applications
5. actuators for controlling air conditioners, fans and lights
6. live testbeds on IITB campus generating data sets for energy optimization
7. air conditioning load simulator
8. sensor data sets.


Scientific Output
The design methodology adopted in this project embraces the paradigm of plug-and-play architecture so that solutions are modular, expandable, and easy to deploy. The design choices made by the team have lead to highly efficient sensor and actuator nodes. The data sets generated during the course of this project can be used extensively for various studies such as those focused on energy optimization/control as well as those pertaining to study of energy consumption patterns. The testbeds created on the campus would provide live environments to validate the proposed solutions. The project team will publish papers and/or reports documenting the solution development as well as testing.

Results and outcome till date
1. Wireless sensor node prototype designed and deployed on IITB campus
2. Test-bed development - Wireless sensor node network deployed in classroom and conference room - Energy meters deployed for validation and calibration purposes
3. Machine learning-based algorithms for detecting faulty sensor data: leverage data statistics, approximately 98% accuracy in fault detection
4. Predict usage of air conditioners based on temperature data alone with moderately high accuracy
5. Developed scheduling algorithms for appliance control to reduce electricity costs - Leverage dynamic programming with robust representation of uncertainty
- Amenable for on-chip implementation
6. Interactive web-interface developed for data processing and analysis
7. Proof-of-concept established for actuators for controlling fans, lights and air conditioners
8. Working on physics and data-driven models for energy consumption
Societal benefit and impact anticipated
Lower energy demand is desirable since it reducing the generation demand. While on the other hand, enabling demand response has other benefits in terms of coinciding
Next steps
The sensor nodes will be further honed allow for USB-powered charging and on- air programming for easy maintenance. Control strategies for appliance control using laws of thermodynamics as well as sensor data will be developed. Sensors, actuators and control mechanisms will be extensively field tested and validated.
Publications and reports
1. A. Kowli, J. Jose, V. S. Borkar, and Imthias Ahamed TP. "A dynamic programming framework for optimal home scheduling." Innovative Smart Grid Technologies-Asia (ISGT-Asia), 2017
2. V. Joshi, O. Desai and A Kowli. "High accuracy sensor fault detection for energy management applications." IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing, Informatics, Communication and Energy Systems (SPICES), 2017
Financial Information
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Total sanction: Rs. 14004000
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Amount received: Rs. 9720000
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Amount utilised for Equipment: Rs. 902171.06
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Amount utilised for Manpower: Rs. 2440108
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Amount utilised for Consumables: Rs. 158320.09
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Amount utilised for Contingency: Rs. 82595.32
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Amount utilised for Travel: Rs. 240195
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Amount utilised for Other Expenses: 0
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Amount utilised for Overheads: Rs. 1160000
Equipment and facilities
Equipment: Primarily computers for simulations and analytics. Facilities: Multiple classrooms and conference rooms on IITB campus have been instrumented with sensors.