ETH Zurich : Computer Science : Pervasive Computing : Distributed Systems : Education : Student Projects : Abstract

Visualization Workbench for Energy Consultants based on Electricity Consumption Data (B)

Status: Abgeschlossen

Background

The energy distribution in developed countries shows that electricity has a high percentage of total consumed energy and this share is still increasing. Giving a detailed view on how and where electricity is used in households is essential to perform suitable actions to reduce the electricity consumption. The increasing availability of smart meters in private households enables the use of automated energy consultant tools with highly granular data. In a recent project, six households were equipped with smart meters and several plugs, providing consumption data of the whole household as well as of specific appliances. This project focuses on giving skilled professionals a tool to analyse real time electricity consumption data using portable mobile devices as well as remote personal computers.

Objectives

Contrary to previous work on the visualisation of energy consumption for consumers, this project puts emphasis on providing a tool for professional energy consultants. Concrete aspects of the project include:

• Identify the specific requirements of an energy consultant tool using highly granular electricity consumption data and characterise the relevant features for visualisation
• Evaluate different software platforms, in particular a native Android Java application versus portable browser based application considering performance, portability and available frameworks
• Design and develop an application considering modern software engineering techniques
• Visualize massive amounts of real time and historic data
• Help to detect and analyse the electricity consumption of certain appliances