A Deep Recurrent Neural Network for Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring Based on Multi-Feature Input Space and Post-Processing

Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) is a process of estimating operational states and power consumption of individual appliances, which if implemented in real-time, can provide actionable feedback in terms of energy usage and personalized recommendations to consumers. Intelligent disaggregation algorithms such as deep neural networks can fulfill this objective if they possess high estimation accuracy and lowest generalization error. In order to achieve these two goals, this paper presents a disaggregation algorithm based on a deep recurrent neural network using multi-feature input space and post-processing. First, the mutual information method was used to select electrical parameters that had the most influence on the power consumption of each target appliance. Second, selected steady-state parameters based multi-feature input space (MFS) was used to train the 4-layered bidirectional long short-term memory (LSTM) model for each target appliance. Finally, a post-processing technique was used at the disaggregation stage to eliminate irrelevant predicted sequences, enhancing the classification and estimation accuracy of the algorithm. A comprehensive evaluation was conducted on 1-Hz sampled UKDALE and ECO datasets in a noised scenario with seen and unseen test cases. Performance evaluation showed that the MFS-LSTM algorithm is computationally efficient, scalable, and possesses better estimation accuracy in a noised scenario, and generalized to unseen loads as compared to benchmark algorithms. Presented results proved that the proposed algorithm fulfills practical application requirements and can be deployed in real-time.