Estoy de viaje, nuevamente. Esta vez para visitar una presa a tres horas de Nashville, Tennessee, y aprender más sobre el sistema de monitoreo que están utilizando allí.

Acabo de llegar al hotel. Después de un autobus, dos aviones y un viaje en carro alquilado hacia dos hoteles (el primero estaba lleno), encontré una habitación congelada, con música country en el fondo. Al parecer aquí la gente prefiere dormir con mucho frío y música bailable.

Parece que será un viaje interesante.

2012 NILM Workshop at CMU

The paragraphs below are a summary of what happened during the event, so if you attended or are simply interested in getting access to the slides and papers here are some useful links:

• Most of the extended abstracts have been posted online, along with posters and slide decks for the presentations.
• We have also published a few photos of the event here.

The event was kicked off by Prof. James H. Garrett, Jr., the head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at CMU, during a lunch session. Zico and I then presented our view on the history and current state of NILM research, to set the stage for the rest of the talks. Our presentation can be found here.

Following this, we had a session on event-based approaches to NILM. The main talk for this session was by Michael Zeifman, from the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems (CSE), and followed by short talks by researchers at CMU, Samsung and the iHomeLab in Switzerland. The second session of the day was on high-frequency approaches, which notably include the work of Shwetak Patel and his team at the University of Washington. For that session we had Sidhant Gupta from UWa as the main speaker, followed by a talk from Kevin Ashton, the general manager at Belkin International, and Hampden Kuhns from LoadIQ. Zico Kolter led the next session on non event-based approaches, followed by Oliver Parson from U. of Southampton in the UK (who also happens to have a blog on this topic).

The last session was focused on issues that go beyond algorithms for solving the problem. Industry participants from PlotWatt, Verlitics/Emme and Bidgely presented their perspectives on the problems that they have faced when trying to deploy the technology commercially. Then we had two presentations (from NREL and CMU) to showcase some academic perspectives on things to consider beyond algorithms.

We then had a brief informal discussion between all the participants and some speakers in an attempt to define two things: (a) future directions for standardizing the evaluation of NILM systems, and (b) the possible future of the workshop. The conversation around these two topics was not as in-depth as some of us would have liked, but nevertheless some interesting points were brought up. For instance, Krish Gomatom from the Electric Power Research Institute (ERPI) revealed that his team is in the process of initiating a set of pilot experiments to evaluate NILM technologies this year. His slides are available here. We also learned from Stephan Tomek that the International Energy Agency (IEA), through its 4E project is embarked on a scoping study to evaluate the potential of NILM technologies.

Regarding the future of the workshop, based on the interest shown by the participants and the realization of how large the community really is, I think that it is fair to say that there will likely be another workshop in the future. Whether it is twelve, eighteen or twenty four months into the future, I am not sure. It was very nice to see so many different researchers and practitioners come together. As I mentioned on a previous post, NILM research is alive and well in 2012, almost thirty years after its conception.

A few things I stumbled upon this past week:

• Wolfenstein: Celebrating 20 Years of Wolfenstein 3D: The creators of this computer game I played so much during my youth, have released a fully working version of it which you can play on your browser.
• ‘Anger Room’ in Texas Allows Stressed-Out Customers to Smash TVs, Other Junk: Yes, it’s real. Here is the link to the official site.
• In Sitting Still, a Bench Press for the Brain: A NYTimes article about the proven benefits of meditation.
• Email ‘vacations’ decrease stress, increase concentration: The fact that this is news, is what should be worrisome.

• … and we're ready to start the 1st International Workshop on Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring #NILM2012 http://t.co/F3MbGpfx #
• “@ethangoldman: Thanks, @bergesmario – 1st int'l #NILM workshop was excellent! http://t.co/jB8G02nF” I'm glad you enjoyed it! #
• “@ices_cmu: PA Smart Infrastructure Incubator faculty contribute to groundbreaking book on building assessment: http://t.co/qPhRzIxA” #
• Are you working on building energy efficiency using embedded systems? Consider submitting your work to #BuildSys 2012: http://t.co/Wbbsdz3I #
• The 1st International Workshop on Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring was a success! Here are some photos: http://t.co/EJ3vpOHd #NILM2012 #NILM #

You may have found yourself in a similar situation: while reviewing a manuscript handed to you in PDF format, you annotate it using Adobe Acrobat Pro and later realize that all of your comments and markups have your name in the Author field. Now you cannot submit the PDF without revealing your identity.

It turns out that the solution to this is quite simple. I was almost about to write a script to automate the process of changing the name of each comment/markup, until I stumbled into a comment by JWFetz here. Basically, all you have to do is:

1. Show the comment list (Comments -> Show Comment List)
2. Select all comments (Click on one, and then press CTRL (command) + A)
3. Right click on one of the comments, and click on Properties
4. Go to the General tab, and change the Author field to whatever you like.

Hopefully this comes in handy for some of you.

Here are the most interesting things I found on the web this week:

• If This Then That: a very useful and promising tool that lets you define event-driven actions using other existing web services. [via @kryptt]
• Charlie Rose interviews Sebastian Thrun: nothing novel, but a good interview.
• Bill Withers – Kissin My Love: it’s hard to resist the groove. [via @ferreiralex]
• Parallel Universes: probably an interesting read, judging by the abstract and figures. [via @pickover]

As a bonus, here is a video of a real-life Robinson Crusoe [via @kottke]:

A real-life Robinson Crusoe

• Over 150 unread e-mails await. Sorry to those of you who are still waiting for a response from me. Let's do this. #

The semester has still not come to an end and yet the summer travel season has apparently begun. I have been in Dallas since yesterday, attending a workshop on load shape libraries and customer load insights arranged by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Tomorrow (more like in a few hours) I leave to New York to participate in a panel as part of BuildingsNY. Then there is a trip to the Wolf Creek Dam in a few weeks, and more trips after. All in all, I will only be in Pittsburgh for about 14 days this month. OK, enough about my travel schedule.

Today during the workshop I jotted down a few simple and unprocessed ideas/observations that I would like to share. It is always interesting to participate in conversations with industry because the disconnect between academic research and industry problems becomes evident very quickly. Most of these disconnects are due to the fact that the answers being sought by academia will only become useful later, but often times these answers are in response to problems that do not even exist and will likely never exist; and that is a big problem. The observations I made today are not necessarily under this category, however:

• There is a need to quantify the benefits of load research. Although there are no hard numbers, the benefits of customer research are believed to be:
• The possibility of making informed decisions to defer large capital investments.
• Informing policy and regulation with solid evidence.
• Billing dispute resolution
• Fraud detection
• Identifying causes of high bills
• Better customer service
• Two-way communication with end-use loads for verification of load dispatch is not likely to happen, even though verification is really important for demand-side management programs.
• It could be useful to learn more about the techniques used in Conditional Demand Analysis.
• Load researchers do not think of sub-cycle statistics (e.g., harmonics) or other high-frequency information when talking about load research. They mostly think about hourly active power values.
• Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring is alive and well, as I had thought.

Regresó el conejo de sus vacaciones de primavera:

El conejo, de regreso, junto a la evidencia del viaje.

El conejo en el puente Golden Gate

Parece que esta vez fue para San Francisco. Si sigue viajando con esta frecuencia, llegará un momento en el que necesitará otra mesa más para las numerosas fotos.

Entradas Relacionadas:

• Conejo Perdido
• Conejo Perdido (2)
• Conejo Perdido (3)
• Conejo Perdido (4)
• Conejo Perdido (5)

Here are the noteworthy links for this week:

• Memory Foraging: When the Brain Behaves Like a Bee: Unknowingly, I have been using a similar method to find words by going through each letter in the alphabet until I find it. I seem to store words in memory in letter bins.
• Will Organic Food Fail to Feed the World?: I wanted to follow this up with this video, but haven’t done that yet.
• Thinking in a Foreign Language Makes Decisions More Rational: I had always thought the English-speaking Mario had a more scientific personality, whereas the Spanish-speaking one is more of an artist.
• Mexico City Now Lets You Trade Trash For Food: I wonder how this will work out in the long run.