Disaggregation Categories (Activities)

These reports correspond to a data feed that describes a breakdown of total electricity consumption for each customer and calendar month/billing period. For example, ‘customer X’s electricity usage in November 2020 consisted of 40% laundry, 40% cooking, and 20% lighting’. Electricity consumption will be broken down into the following activities:

Electricity

• Always On
• Refrigeration
• Lighting
• Entertainment
• Cooking
• Laundry
• Space Heating
• Water Heating
• Electric Vehicle
• Pool and Saunas
• Other

Gas

• Space Heating
• Water Heating
• Cooking

NET2GRID’s algorithms determine the activity breakdown by utilizing standard consumption proportions and then refining that for individual customers based on i) identified activity usage events, ii) customer, building, and appliance ownership metadata, and, finally, iii) energy consumption. Monthly activity breakdowns in the Disaggregation Categories report are provided as a daily updated batch for each month/billing period under examination.

The activity disaggregation process is executed daily and generates the monthly consumption breakdown from day one. As the days proceed, more data is collected for the current month (or billing period), and the breakdown is daily replaced by the most recent and, therefore, most accurate.

This process is independent of the detection of appliance events. For instance, the summation of the appliance events detected for laundry appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, and tumble dryer) should not be compared to the monthly breakdown of the laundry activity for a given month.

Supported Activities

AlwaysOn consumption refers to the load consumed by the standby energy consumption of the appliances in the installation and constantly plugged in. Even though the individual standby consumption of the installed devices may be trivial, their daily aggregated consumption can reach 25 - 30%.

A set of appliances operates without human intervention throughout the day; the most common refrigeration units or freezers comprise the Refrigeration category. It is standard for households to have more than one refrigeration appliance in different house rooms. Usually, they are not and not just in the household’s kitchen. Additionally, these appliances must be operational all day and night, meaning that this category’s consumption can also be substantial.

The Lighting category contains all the illuminating appliances in an installation. This category’s consumption is pretty low for residential consumers, and the primary consumption appears mostly at night. In commercial buildings, lighting consumption is concentrated during market hours and is significantly higher.

The Entertainment category comprises a large variety of primarily non-energy-intensive appliances used for entertainment or educational purposes. This category contains TVs, Game Consoles, Home Cinema systems, desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones. The aggregated consumption of all those appliances during the night hours and on the weekends is becoming a large portion of total energy consumption.

Laundry activity contains the end-uses of appliances used for washing/drying objects, meaning Dishwashers, Washing Machines, and Dryers. These appliances are usually present in all households, and their usage depends on the number of tenants. Usually, they support automatic operation via scheduling, so it is not unusual to see them operate during night or early day hours for cost reduction.

Cooking is another activity that participates heavily in the daily energy consumption of households. Ovens and hobs are prevalent electrical appliances necessary to prepare the day's meals. Also, many micro-appliances are connected to Cooking activities, such as Toasters, Coffeemakers, Microwave Ovens, etc., which are usually part of the family's daily routine.

Space Heating is one of the most consuming activities in an installation, especially in the winter months of the year. Heat Pumps for space heating are becoming more and more efficient; that is why their household penetration has been rising in the last few years in most Central and Northern European countries.

Like the previous category, Space Cooling is one of the most consuming activities in installations located in countries with hot summer months, such as Southern European countries, Australia, etc. Air Conditioning units are the most common space cooling appliances. At the same time, there are cases where Heat Pumps are also used for cooling spaces.

The Water Heating category commonly participates in households that do not use gas as the primary heating source. Commonly used appliance types that participate in this activity by warming water are Electric Showers, Immersion Heaters, and Water Pump Boilers.

Electric Vehicle is a particular case of disaggregation category consumption. It can be found in a small percentage of the installations since the electric vehicle penetration is still pretty low. However, if an electric vehicle is present, it becomes a large proportion of the monthly energy consumption, up to 40 - 50% of the total energy consumed.

Swimming Pools and Saunas are particular and unusual appliances, with low penetration in all markets, except for countries with tropical or scorching weather for many months of the year (Australia). As with electric vehicles, if at least one pool or sauna appliance is present, it becomes a large proportion of the monthly energy consumption, up to 20 - 30% of the total energy consumed.

Finally, all the remaining appliances that cannot be part of the previously mentioned are grouped in the Other category. In this category, profile information plays a significant role in the number of appliances that are not participating in any other activities. Up to this point, the NET2GRID NILM solution can disaggregate the total energy consumption so that the Other category is 20 - 30% at most. However, the percentage of the Other category is heavily affected by the available profile information.

Fetching Disaggregation Categories Consumption Data for a requested month

The Get requested month disaggregation data CE-API endpoint allows developers to retrieve all the disaggregation categories consumption data for a specific month. When there is no disaggregation available for the requested month yet (for instance, on the 1st day of that month), an estimation based on the preceding month’s relative disaggregation distribution (if available) and the requested month’s actual consumption is returned. This call does not require that tariff and budget information have been set for the installation during the requested month or earlier. It returns no budget information and 0 costs when tariffs are not set.

A pseudo-code request to the Get requested month disaggregation data endpoint looks like this:

GET /v2/disaggregation/{year}/{month}
Authorization: Bearer <access_token>

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

{
  "status": "ok",
  "data": {
    "electricity": {
      "Total": {
        "usage": 222.965,
        "cost": 31.22
      },
      "categories": {
        "AlwaysOn": {
          "usage": 60.6087,
          "cost": 8.49
        },
        "Refrigeration": {
          "usage": 25.4779,
          "cost": 3.57
        },
        "Other": {
          "usage": 34.1134,
          "cost": 4.78
        }
      }
    },
    "production": {
      "total_produced": 50.889,
      "produced": {
        "Total": {
          "usage": 50.889,
          "cost": 6.62
        },
        "categories": {
          "Solar": {
            "usage": 50.889,
            "cost": 6.62
          }
        }
      }
    },
    "gas": {
      "Total": {
        "usage": 29.889,
        "cost": 18.53
      },
      "categories": {
        "SpaceHeating": {
          "usage": 0,
          "cost": 0
        },
        "WaterHeating": {
          "usage": 0,
          "cost": 0
        },
        "Cooking": {
          "usage": 0,
          "cost": 0
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "timestamp": "2022-02-17T11:07:08+01:00"
}

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 for a specific day. Each message consists of the following properties:

The electricity and the gas documents contain the following fields:

The production document contains the following fields:

The following image shows how this API is used in the Ynni Mobile App.