Always On Breakdown

Always On (AON) consumption corresponds to the energy consumed within a residence because appliances continuously consume energy, switched OFF, or set in StandBy mode. Surprisingly, many appliances, whatever status they want you to think they’re in, ultimately they’re ON; they add to the electric bill without any practical reason and cost the end consumers money. Other terms are used for that, such as phantom load, baseload, leaking electricity, or standby power, but the term AlwaysON prevailed in most relevant studies and literature. Attempting a different interpretation, AON is the minimum energy a house consumes at any time.

The following list outlines all appliance modes that can be set and measured. It is difficult to assign measurement modes to all appliance types, as product design plays a significant role in which modes can an electrical unit be set. More specifically, this depends heavily on the present and active functions in each appliance, which is not always obvious to the user.

• In Use - ON Mode: The product is performing its primary function. This includes battery charging functions, data downloading, etc.

• Active StandBy Mode: Active StandBy is when an appliance is on but not performing its main function. For example, a DVD player may be ΟΝ but is not playing a disc. This mode is usually only present in devices (a) where there is a mechanical function that is not active (e.g., DVD drive or motor), but power circuits are ON, or (b) where a device is in a quiescent power state (audio amplifier with no audio signal).

• Passive StandBy Mode: Passive StandBy is when an appliance is not performing its main function but is ready to be switched ON (in most cases with remote control) or is performing some secondary display function (e.g., has a display or clock which is activated in this mode).

• OFF Mode: OFF mode can only be entered if the appliance has a usable power switch. In this mode, an appliance is connected to a power source but does not produce sound or pictures, transmit or receive information, or wait to be switched ON by the user. If the appliance has a remote control, it cannot be woken by this in OFF mode – i.e., it can only be activated via the power switch on the appliance.

Always On Specifics

The Always On consumption is a special case. It is calculated as a daily appliance event and a disaggregation category for the previous month or billing period. On the monthly level, Insight Platform also provides a more detailed breakdown of the Always On activity in subcategories. In detail:

Always On Appliance: Although there is no such appliance in the user’s profile definitions, the daily Always On consumption is reported as a non-time-based appliance event every day.
Always On Disaggregation Category: At the same time, there is also a disaggregation category with the same name. Part of the monthly consumption is attributed to the Always On activity.
Always On Consumption Breakdown: The Always On monthly consumption detected during the monthly disaggregation is further split into six categories based on literature.

Fetching Appliance Events for a given period

The Get always on breakdown CE-API endpoint allows developers to retrieve all the appliance events for a specific period of interest. These appliance event details can then be used within the customer's solution.

A pseudo-code request to the Get always on breakdown endpoint looks like this:

GET /v2/consumption/electricity/alwayson/breakdown/{year}/{month}
Authorization: Bearer <access_token>

A successful request will return a response similar to the following:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "data": [
    {
      "category": "Laundry",
      "energy_wh": 2340,
      "cost": 0,
      "percentage": 2.732049036777583
    },
    {
      "category": "Cooking",
      "energy_wh": 9550,
      "cost": 2,
      "percentage": 11.150029188558086
    },
    {
      "category": "HeatingCooling",
      "energy_wh": 21320,
      "cost": 4,
      "percentage": 24.892002335084644
    },
    {
      "category": "Computer",
      "energy_wh": 34780,
      "cost": 7,
      "percentage": 40.607122008172794
    },
    {
      "category": "Entertainment",
      "energy_wh": 13760,
      "cost": 3,
      "percentage": 16.065382370110914
    },
    {
      "category": "OtherAppliances",
      "energy_wh": 3900,
      "cost": 0,
      "percentage": 4.553415061295971
    }
  ],
  "timestamp": "2022-08-18T11:02:03+02:00"
}

As you'd probably expect, the response contains the standard JSON structure containing the status field indicating whether or not the response was successful. If successful, the data field will contain a list of appliance events in the provided period. Each message consists of the following properties:

Here is a screenshot of how this call is used from the Ynni Mobile App.