R studio Machine learning
Book Chapters for Ideas/About-the-Editors_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-Power-Systems.pdf
About the Editors
Reza Arghandeh is an Assistant Professor in the ECE Department in Florida
State University. He is director of the Collaborative Intelligent Infrastructure Lab. He has been a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California,
Berkeley’s California Institute for Energy and Environment 2013–15. He has 5 years industrial experience in power and energy systems. He completed his PhD in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in power systems at Virginia
Tech. He holds Master’s degrees in Industrial and System Engineering from
Virginia Tech 2013 and in Energy Systems from the University of Manchester 2008. From 2011 to 2013, he was a power system software designer at Electrical
Distribution Design Inc. in Virginia. Dr. Arghandeh’s research interests include,
but are not limited to, data analysis and decision support for smart grids and smart cities using statistical inference, machine learning, information theory,
and operations research. He is a recipient of the Association of Energy Engineers
(AEE) Scholarship 2012, the UC Davis Green Tech Fellowship 2011, and the best paper award from the ASME 2012 Power Conference and IEEE PESGM
2015. He is the chair of the IEEE Task Force on Big Data Application for Power
Distribution Network.
Yuxun Zhou is currently a PhD candidate at Department of EECS, UC Berkeley.
Prior to that, he obtained the Diplome d’Ingenieur in applied mathematics
from Ecole Centrale Paris and a BS degree from Xi’an Jiaotong University. Yuxun has published more than 30 refereed articles, and has received several
student awards. His research interest is on machine learning theories and algo-
rithms for modern sensor rich, ubiquitously connected cyber-physical systems, including smart grid, power distribution networks, smart buildings, etc.
xiii
- About the Editors
Book Chapters for Ideas/Acknowledgments_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-Power-Systems.pdf
Acknowledgments
The idea for this book goes back to a few years ago when we were analyzing
smart meters and SCADA data from some Californian electric utilities using dif- ferent machine learning and statistical inferences. Later on, we started to work
on phasor measurement units (PMU) and micro-PMU data streams which have
much more resolution than the smart meters. The PMU and power quality recording data (120 Hz to 30 kHz and beyond) plus highly spatial distributed
data from smart meters marked the advent of big data in power systems.
Utilities are already dealing with big data challenges considering the lack of knowledge in workforce and the lack of suitable infrastructure to handle and
process the massive data. We are sure that some of our readers have a similar
experience. On top of that, in the near future every house may have rooftop solar panels, controllable loads, smart appliances, electric vehicles, and various
software-enabled hardware that will be more connected in the era of Internet
of Things.
This book is a step toward data-driven utilities by presenting a combination of
the high-level view on utility enterprise architecture, data analysis methodol-
ogy, and various applications of data analytics in power transmission and distribution networks.
We have been lucky enough to have great maestros in our lives. Our parents Ali & Soodabeh Arghandeh and Yanping & Suxue Zhou, our advisers Prof. Robert
Broadwater and Prof. Saifur Rahman at Virginia Tech and Prof. Costas Spanos
and Prof. Alexandra von Meier at UC Berkeley.
In this book, we have a collection of highly recognized experts in academia
and industry in the field of power systems and data analysis from all around the world. We would like to thank them all for their outstanding contributions.
We would like to thank Dr. Heather Paudler for her valuable input on the
book. We extend special thanks to Renata R. Rodrigues and Ana C. A. Garcia from the Elsevier editorial team for their countless help and advice during
the different stages of preparation for this book. We also appreciate Honoka
xxv
xxvi Acknowledgments
Hamano’s efforts in designing the book cover, icons for each section, and
various other creative graphics inside the book.
Finally, we would like to thank several reviewers for valuable comments on
preliminary drafts of this book: Jeffrey S. Katz, Ricardo Bessa, John D. McDonald, Carol L. Stimmel, Mohammad Babakmehr, Elena Mocanu, Madeleine Gibescu,
Mehrdad Majidi, Gian Antonio Susto, Deepjyoti Deka, Fabio Rinaldi, Feng Gao,
Han Zou, Ming Jin, Ruoxi Jia, Yingchen Zhang, Behzad Najafi, Amin Hassanzadeh, Mihye Ahn, Hanif Livani, Matthias Stifter, Saverio Bolognani,
Michael Chertkov, Amirhessam Tahmassebi, Madhavi Konila Sriram, Roy Dong,
and Jose Cordova.
We look forward to hearing from our readership; please contact us with any
comments, suggestions, and questions.
Reza Arghandeh Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
Yuxun Zhou University of California, Berkeley, CA, United States
- Acknowledgments
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-10---Future-Trends-for-Big-Data-Applic_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-.pdf
CHAPTER 10
Future Trends for Big Data Application in Power Systems
Ricardo J. Bessa INESC Technology and Science—INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal
223
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
The technological revolution in the electric power system sector is producing large volumes of data
with pertinent impact in the business and functional processes of system operators, generation com- panies, and grid users. Big data techniques can be applied to state estimation, forecasting, and con-
trol problems, as well as to support the participation of market agents in the electricity market. This
chapter presents a revision of the application of data mining techniques to these problems. Trends
like feature extraction/reduction and distributed learning are identified and discussed. The knowl- edge extracted from power system and market data has a significant impact in key performance indi-
cators, like operational efficiency (e.g., operating expenses), investment deferral, and quality of
supply. Furthermore, business models related to big data processing and mining are emerging and boosting new energy services.
1 INTRODUCTION
The advent of Smart Grids with advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) and installation of new measurement devices, such as pha-
sor measurement unit (PMU) and remote terminal unit (RTU) in secondary
substations (MV/LV), allied to additional information collected by SCADA, will generate a large volume of data streams.
Equipment installed in MV/LV substations collects imported/exported active power, voltage magnitude, and reactive power in four quadrants, and a distri-
bution system operator (DSO) can easily operate more than 10,000 secondary
substations. In HV/MV substations, which can be more than 1000 in one DSO, additional data is collected through the SCADA, such as current, active and
reactive power flow in the network feeders, switcher and capacitor banks status,
as well as variables related to electric transformers (e.g., input/output voltage temperature, tap changer position, transformer oil level, insulation level of
transformer oil, load). This high volume of grid data has different constraints
in terms of communications’ latency and availability. For instance, significant technical and economic constraints are expected in the real-time communica-
tion between smart meters and secondary substation, which requires new
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00010-3
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
224 CHAPTER 10: Future Trends for Big Data Application in Power Systems
approaches for the real-time monitoring of low voltage (LV) networks. More-
over, the time resolution collected by different equipment differs, PMU collects high-frequency data, while RTU, in general, collects low-frequency data (e.g.,
15-min average).
PMU can provide high-update rate data to a transmission system operator (TSO).
For instance, the Texas Synchrophasor Network collects 30 measurements per
second from each PMU (e.g., voltage/current magnitude and phase, frequency), which means 108,000 lines of comma-separated data per hour and 2.6 million
lines for a 24 h’ period; for 15 PMUs, file storage is about 1 GB per day [1].
This data, collected at different voltage levels, is essential to revisit classical TSO and DSO grid management functions, such as forecasting, state estimation,
operational planning, and develop new tools to increase real-time awareness
of operators and design predictive maintenance strategies for network components.
The renewable energy sources (RES) industry is also installing and operating monitoring sensors at the wind turbine and photovoltaic panel level, which
generates a large volume of data that needs to be preprocessed and analyzed
in realtime and transferred to upstream decision centers. For instance, a 2.5 MW wind turbine has more than 120 sensors inside the rotor, the generator,
and on the blades, which gather 10,000 of data points every second. They feed
the information to a remote database, which stores 4 TB from 25,000 turbines around the world.1 The same is valid for gas turbine engine that generates
520 GB per day, in contrast to Twitter where a day of real-time feeds represents
around 80 GB.2 This data can be used for reliability and performance monitor- ing, predictive maintenance, and asset management of conventional and RES
power plants. Eventually, the outcome of the data analysis at the power plant
level can feed power system reliability assessment tools [2], by providing, for instance, data-driven time-varying failure rates.
In addition to all these electrical and mechanical variables, there are also exog- enous variables with significant impact on the power system and power plants
operation and planning, such as measured and predicted weather variables
(e.g., wind speed, temperature, and solar irradiance) that can form a grid of spatial-temporal weather information in a region and/or country.
Electricity markets are already generating large volumes of data like offers
curves (per unit) in different sessions, energy and ancillary services prices, as
1 Source: http://www.gereports.com/post/118712460090/move-over-slow-food-slow-wind-might-be-
the-latest/ (accessed on October 2016). 2 Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240176248/GE-uses-big-data-to-power-machine-
services-business (accessed on October 2016).
2252 Transmission System
well as locational marginal prices (LMP) for each node of the transmission net-
work. The foreseen creation of flexibility markets at the distribution level will increase the volume of data and its spatial scale. The planned investment in
interconnection capacity between different control areas, and the increase inte-
gration of RES in power systems with LMP, makes spatial-temporal modeling of large-scale time series vital for operational and planning purposes. Therefore,
knowledge extraction from big data can create additional value for both market
players and system operators.
All these problems require different layers of data handling: (i) data acquisition
and transmission; (ii) data management (e.g., frameworks like Hadoop or Spark); (iii) data analytics, which can comprise knowledge extraction from data,
optimization, and decision-aid methods. The first two layers already achieved a
high-technology readiness level, with different solutions available in the market [3,4]. However, standardization of the data model, ICT for real-time data trans-
mission, and cybersecurity issues remain areas of significant improvement.
The scope of this chapter is the big data analytics layers and the overall objective
is to discuss the main challenges related to knowledge extraction in different
power system-related problems and cover new (and evolving) problems, such as distributed learning and optimization, spatial-temporal modeling of time
series, data reduction, assimilation, and visualization methods. The entire elec-
tric power system is covered, going from Extra HV to LV, without overlooking the wholesale and retailing electricity market.
This chapter is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the data-driven tech-
niques for dynamic and steady-state analysis of transmission systems, as well as the interaction between transmission and distribution system operators;
in Section 3, the additional monitoring and control capabilities provided by
advanced data mining techniques are discussed in a Smart Grids context; Section 4 discusses the knowledge extraction from failure data to support asset
management strategies of system operators and generation companies; the
added value of big data techniques for electricity market bidding and simula- tion is discussed in Section 5, while Section 6 discusses its application to boost
demand-side flexibility. The conclusions are presented in Section 7.
2 TRANSMISSION SYSTEM
At the transmission system level, the increasing penetration of RES is demand- ing for new monitoring and management tools for both interconnected and
isolated systems. A new generation of decision-aid tools will supply the oper-
ator with valuable information to check the security level of the economic dis- patch and/or electricity market-clearing, considering RES variability and
226 CHAPTER 10: Future Trends for Big Data Application in Power Systems
uncertainty, as well as to increase the real-time awareness and derive recom-
mendations to support preventive decisions.
2.1 Dynamic Behavior Analysis
The installation of PMU in different voltage levels generates important infor-
mation to warn operators and system level controllers about impending tran- sient stability issues, support their preventive decisions, and perform
postmortem analysis. The California independent system operator (CAISO)
defined use cases that describe the inclusion of PMU data for grid operations, control and modeling tasks [5]. The use cases identified seven scenarios to
demonstrate the value of PMU data:
1. The PMU network triggers an alarm (e.g., rate of frequency change,
modes of oscillation, rate of damping) for a recommendation system that
generates a set of control actions for the operator. 2. Measure the frequency difference between main and isolated grids for
system restoration after a disturbance and determine how much
generation must be changed to reconnect the separated grids. 3. Postmortem analysis of system events to understand the causes of
disturbance, which is used to validate offline dynamic models and contingency simulation tools.
4. Validation of gridcode and market models for new types of resources,
such as RES and storage. 5. Detect transient instability and derive preventive control actions that can
respond to specific or wind-area grid problems, e.g., angular and voltage
stability, low-frequency oscillations. 6. Identify poorly damped interarea oscillations and design smart control
actions to mitigate the oscillations, e.g., use PMU to tune power system
stabilizers. 7. Increase the line rating of transmission lines in realtime. The PMU data can
detect postcontingency technical problems and activate the preventive
control actions from scenario (5) to mitigate in realtime the violations by reconfiguring the system (e.g., increase generation or decrease load).
The electric power research institute (EPRI) identifies the following applica- tions for PMU data [6]: (i) improvement of state estimation; (ii) oscillation
detection and control; (iii) voltage stability monitoring and control;
(iv) load model validation; (v) system restoration and event analysis.
It should be stressed that the use of PMU data demands for a portfolio of dif-
ferent tools at the control center level, which corresponds to the enhancement of classical functions and to the development of new functions. Examples of
related tools are the state estimator, voltage stability analysis, volt/Var control,
and RES dispatch. A PMU network combined with decision trees can be used to
2272 Transmission System
match the generator trips signature with the overall system dynamic, aiming at
finding the most likely location of an event in realtime [7]. The data processing and machine learning fitting were performed offline and in a controlled envi-
ronment since the training consisted of 53 events that match known generator
trips. An industrialization of this solution would require machine learning algorithms for classification problems able to cope with high-speed data
streams and detect concept drift [8].
Other potential applications are: line trip detection that requires postprocessing
methods, such as a low-pass filter to remove high-frequency noise and a second
one to get the trend of frequency data [9]; online prediction of transient stability (i.e., three phase faults at different buses) with decision tree algorithm
in order to derive corrective control rules [10].
The seemly integration of PMU in power system operational tools will require a data analytics platform that integrates batch, real-time, and iterative data
processing. Apache Spark is emerging as the cluster computing platform for future power systems [11]. The trend is toward distributed computing for data
collection and analytics. However, there is the need to develop algorithms that
are parallelizable to distribute the computational load across multiple nodes [12].
Furthermore, this efficient computational framework does not waive the appli-
cation of data reduction and compression techniques, which should be flexible to the different operating conditions, e.g., compress less data under disturbance
conditions [13]. Classical techniques, such as principal component analysis
and discrete wavelet transform, can be extended to this problem to have time-varying (potentially combined with change detection) and situational-
dependent characteristics. Clustering algorithms can be also used to group
the dynamic response of generators (i.e., transient responses of generator rotor angles) and use a classification algorithm to forecast the dynamic signature of a
system using a dataset of postdisturbance responses [14].
Failure in communication creates missing values in the power system dynamic
response. The state of the art consists in using the linear auto-regressive with
exogenous input model to estimate system dynamics, together with an input location selection methodology based on a coherency function [15]. The spatial
and temporal dependencies between the system variables can be further
exploited with the different families of covariance functions associated to Gauss- ian processes theory and improve the missing values estimation tasks [16].
Machine learning algorithms can be also used to give a real-time quantitative security evaluation of the current operating state system (i.e., expected fre-
quency deviation) based on historical states and observations of the power sys-
tem variables [17]. This research line was further explored in microgrids and isolated systems [18].
228 CHAPTER 10: Future Trends for Big Data Application in Power Systems
2.2 Steady-State Analysis
The tools for steady-state analysis of power systems, such as power flow and state estimation algorithms, reached a high-technological readiness level and several
commercial solutions are already available. The current challenge is to integrate
new and diverse types of information in these classical algorithms, capture the spatial-temporal structure of variables dependency, while guaranteeing a high
scalability.
Past development in state estimation algorithms already included information
from load forecasts to predict the future states of the power systems. For
instance, modeling the dependency between nodal injections forecast errors with a covariance matrix [19,20]. The load forecast and state estimation theo-
ries can be merged to forecast the future values of the power system state var-
iable (bus voltage magnitude and phase) and then calculate the load values as a function of the state parameters [21]. This new load forecast paradigm enables
the use of additional data, such as voltage phase from PMU or electrical vari-
ables collected from multiarea networks, and the construction of local forecast models for different subnetworks.
However, the modeling of spatial-temporal dependencies is indispensable and requires a method suitable for a large-scale implementation. Gaussian copulas
can be employed to model the spatial-temporal dependency structure between
random variables [22], but have two limitations: (i) lack of flexibility in model- ing different types of tail’s dependency; (ii) low scalability when the number of
random variables increases.
The effect of RES and load uncertainty (and variability) in state estimation, together with frequent topological changes, leads to significant state shift in
power system operation. This problem can be mitigated by developing data-
driven solutions, instead of using single data point (last state estimation). Kernel ridge regression with a Bayesian framework that uses historical data
collected by the energy management system can tackle this problem [23].
Another relevant trend is the use of distributed learning approaches for robust
state estimation that results in minimum data exchanges between neighboring
areas [24], mitigates privacy issues, and can run locally in grid equipment. This distributed learning paradigm relies in the alternating direction method of mul-
tipliers (ADMM) that combines the decomposability offered by the dual ascent
method with the superior convergence properties of the method of multipliers, which means that problems with nondifferentiable objective functions can be
easily addressed and it is possible to perform parallel optimization [25]. It is
also possible to apply other variants, such as the Douglas-Rachford and block coordinate descent methods [26,27]. It is important to stress the nonlinear
nature of the AC power system, which results in a nonconvex problem for
the state estimator.
2292 Transmission System
The same paradigm can be applied to RES forecast to explore geographically
distributed time-series information [28]. The vector autoregression (VAR) framework can be applied to forecast thousands of time series in a distributed
fashion by combining ADMM with LASSO framework to explore the sparsity in
the model’s coefficients.
The practical implementation of the distributed learning paradigm requires an
adequate choice of the distributed processing platform, which can be divided into two types [29]: (i) horizontal scaling: distribute the workload by several
servers—decentralized and distributed cluster (cloud) computing framework;
(ii) vertical scaling: involves installing more processors, memory, and faster hardware inside a single machine.
For horizontal scaling, message passing interface (MPI) was the first communi-
cation protocol to distribute and exchange the data between peers, Apache Hadoop with MapReduce as the data processing scheme emerged later, and
Apache Spark is the prevalent solution. For iterative algorithms like ADMM, MapReduce is not adequate due to disk I/O limitations, while Spark performs
in-memory computations that overcome these limitations for iterative pro-
cesses [29]. The most popular vertical scale up technologies are high- performance computing clusters, multicore processors, and graphics processing
unit (GPU). The ADDM algorithm and variants can be implemented in these
platforms.
2.3 TSO-DSO Cooperation
The data exchange between TSO and DSO will contribute to increase the secu-
rity of both systems in different time-scales, ranging from real-time to long-term planning. The European project evolvDSO developed a usecase for the TSO-
DSO cooperation, which firstly means bidirectional exchange of information,
both historical and real-time data, regarding the operating conditions of the transmission and distribution systems [30]. Secondly, it can also mean the
DSO supporting the TSO operational and planning tasks, for instance, by con- trolling the active and reactive power in the primary substation or elaborating a
joint expansion plan of both systems. Cooperation is needed since presently
the distribution system is a blackbox to the TSO and viceversa. Moreover, con- sidering the increasing integration of distributed energy resources in the distri-
bution system, the operation of both networks becomes challenging and
cannot be decoupled. The new flexible resources (e.g., demand response— DR) are also at the distribution system level, which requires new TSO-DSO
technical protocols for its activation and management.
This increasing cooperation will mean additional data to be integrated and explored in the managing tasks of both TSO and DSO. One trend is the
230 CHAPTER 10: Future Trends for Big Data Application in Power Systems
development of tools capable of estimating the flexibility range of active and
reactive power in the TSO-DSO boundary and separating this flexibility by total cost [31]. The same exercise can be conducted for lower voltage levels
of the power system [32].
For dynamic analysis, the trend is to estimate the dynamic response of load
aggregated at the network node level for a time domain between one and sev-
eral seconds. One example is probabilistic methodologies based on processing and classifying large amounts of historical load data at each bus and standard
dynamic signatures of individual load categories obtained from laboratory/
fieldtests [33]. Another is dynamic equivalent models constructed for the dis- tribution networks that are able to reflect the aggregated behavior of different
resources with respect to system requirements such as frequency containment
reserve. Machine learning algorithms, such as artificial neural networks, can be used as surrogate models for the dynamic equivalents [34].
3 DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM
The big data trends in the distribution system are mainly driven by two objec-
tives. Firstly, increase the monitoring capability of MV and LV networks and
develop fast decision-aid methods for operators. Secondly, implemented pre- dictive active management strategies that take advantage of flexibility from
distributed energy resources to mitigate the impact of RES uncertainty and
variability.
3.1 Monitoring and Situational Awareness
The smart grid paradigm increases the monitoring capability of the distribution
system. However, it might be unmanageable to have real-time monitoring of all the devices in the distribution system, particularly at the LV level. Machine
learning algorithms installed in intelligent electronic devices can support
power system monitoring by providing several functionalities, such as recon- struction of missing signals, state estimation, asset monitoring and diagnosing,
and fault location. These functions should have low computational require-
ments (e.g., no need to store data, capacity of running in low cost processors) and the possibility to adjust under evolving conditions.
For LV grids, the trend is to explore data collected from smart meters and RTU installed in MV/LV substations for close to real-time situational awareness of
operators and with low communication costs. Smart meter data can be used
to increase the knowledge about the LV network topology and characteristics. For instance, it can be used to reduce geographical information system errors
(e.g., connectivity errors in the network topology) and for phase detection [35].
2313 Distribution System
Data-driven methods, such as autoencoder extreme learning machines
(AE-ELM), can be employed to estimate, close to real-time, voltage magnitude and active power for all nodes of the LV network by using only a subset of
meters with real-time communication capability [36,37]. This new smart grid
function can generate under/overvoltage alarms to operators and trigger con- trol management functions to solve the technical problems. These techniques
provide accurate information about voltage magnitude. Only with 30% of the
total meters with real-time communication, the AE-ELM state estimator esti- mates [38]: (i) voltage magnitude values with a mean absolute error (MAE)
of 0.49 V; (ii) active power quantities with an MAE of 0.35 kW. The largest
MAE was 0.79 V.
The challenge is on how to monitor the operating conditions of multiple LV
networks at the same time and derive control strategies to solve detected tech- nical problems. This problem requires new techniques for data streaming visu-
alization and dimension reduction that summarize the operating conditions of
each network and present the information to the operator in a readable way. An example of a different data visualization method for power system is the “spark-
lines” that can display time-varying power system data placed in a geographical
map of the system by using methods of graph drawing [39].
The visualization of the electrical network needs to be also revised to better dis-
play and identify the branches and nodes with technical problems. One possi- bility is to project the electrical distance metrics into a 2-dimensional plane
using dimensional scaling and graph theory [40], which offers new insights
on the electrical network structure and voltage performance.
Social media data (spatial-temporal real-time tweets) can be exploited to detect
and locate electricity power outages with a supervised topic model that uses a
heterogeneous information network [41]. The next generation of tools should be able to combine data collected from the distribution network, state estima-
tion tools, and social media to improve the quality of supply indices of
the DSO.
When alarms are trigged, the operators have a very limited time to take deci-
sions regarding mitigation actions. In this case, techniques that search for ana- logs (i.e., similar operating conditions in the historical data), and conduct
spatial-temporal analysis of events, are needed to generate a set of simple con-
trol rules that the operator can implement in a few seconds, e.g., change the secondary substation on-load tap changer position, reduce in x% the PV gen-
eration in node Y, etc.
A new generation of grid support and operators’ training tools can be developed
to exploit large databases of network measurements and corresponding events.
One example is a tool that performs a pro-active analysis of grid control actions
232 CHAPTER 10: Future Trends for Big Data Application in Power Systems
by analyzing past events and actual real data and resimulate them for improv-
ing grid management rules [42]. The fast access to historical data and the capa- bility to extract (and match) relevant events and patterns in the low running
time are key functional requirements.
Similar to transmission networks, distributed state estimation algorithms run-
ning locally at each smart grid equipment, such as RTU or distributed trans-
former controller, will pave the way toward peer-to-peer data exchange for improved monitoring at MV level. The uncertainty regarding the distribution
system model parameters (e.g., topology, impedances, connected loads/gener-
ators) must be reduced for a proper application of state estimation and control tools. This uncertainty can be reduced by applying a parameter estimation
method that takes advantage of historical AMI and other sensors data. For
instance, the transformer and line series impedance parameters in 3-phase and 1-phase circuits can be estimated with active, reactive power and voltage
measurements collected by an advanced metering infrastructure [43].
3.2 Predictive Control and Management
The smart grid paradigm brings new challenges in terms of load forecast. In the
past, load forecast was classified as a “solved problem’” with highly accurate predictions (e.g., mean absolute percentage error between 2% and 4%). How-
ever, the emerging role of “prosumers’” is making the consumption pattern
more volatile and therefore more difficult to predict. In a near future, the load profiles in distribution systems will vary with the weather conditions due to
self-consumption from photovoltaic panels, dynamic electricity tariffs, con-
sumer preferences, and behavior (e.g., demand response, storage devices). In the case of self-consumption from PV generation, the DSO does not have infor-
mation about the PV generation profile at the residential level and its impact in
the net-load profile. Data-driven techniques based on weather data and PV time series from neighbored sites, and that combine fuzzy theory and clustering
algorithms, can be used to estimate the generation of “invisible” PV sites
[44]. Moreover, change detection algorithms can be used to detect unauthor- ized PV installations and verify the existence of such system with permutation
tests [45].
In distribution grids, modeling the spatial-temporal dependency structure of
nodal net-load forecast errors is essential to design predictive management
strategies with information about uncertainty. To meet this requirement, recent research developed techniques to: (i) explore dependencies between geograph-
ically distributed time series to improve the RES forecasting skill [46,47];
(ii) model the spatial-temporal dependency structure of forecast errors (uncer- tainty) and derive random vectors or joint density functions [22,48]; (iii) apply
feature engineering techniques to spatial-temporal numerical weather
2334 Asset Management
predictions [49]. The goal is to generate highly accurate probabilistic forecasts
that can feed DSO management tools. Moreover, at the LV level, the number of time series to forecast will be very high, which requires distributed computing
solutions.
A classical power system optimization problem is the optimal power flow (OPF),
which, presently, is being extended to a multiperiod version that includes storage
and demand response control actions. Stochastic versions for this problem are being proposed and developed by several authors [50], but the big data-related
trend is the distributed OPF supported by techniques that are also used in distrib-
uted statistical learning, such as ADMM and auxiliary problem principle [51,52]. This optimization problem can also benefit from deep learning frameworks like
TensorFlow that waive the use of linear algebra libraries, which are the source of
high-computational times in the OPF [53].
4 ASSET MANAGEMENT
Presently, TSO and DSO are improving their asset data management systems to include multiple time series related to their health and operating conditions,
taking advantage of new information collected by the advanced metering infra-
structure. This data is valuable for the following tasks: (i) decide about life extension measures or asset renewal; (ii) design predictive management strat-
egies and evaluate their impact in the power system reliability. Information
about the failure rates and the impact of different maintenance strategies are essential for reliability assessment tools based on Monte Carlo simulation
methods [54].
The identification of the critical assets, i.e., assets that require a more appropri-
ate maintenance strategy, can be made with statistical analysis of failure data
selected with Laplace test and correlation coefficient techniques [55]. More- over, techniques to analyze outage indices are required to evaluate the effect
of different processes in the outage rate, evaluate human mistakes effects and
planning strategies [56]. The following needs were identified for this problem: (i) estimate distinctive failure rates for each asset, conditioned by weather vari-
ables, age, and maintenance strategies; (ii) assess the benefit of maintenance on
the failure rates; (iii) evaluate the consequences of a failure of contingency [57].
Predictive management strategies/conditional-based monitoring aim at predict/
infer if component X of machine Y is about to fail in N days with probability M%, or in other words, probability of failure and time to failure. These tasks combine feature
engineering techniques with domain knowledge, feature reduction, and selec-
tion and a base learner for classification and/or regression. Some examples are: fuzzy-logic techniques applied to evaluate the health index of a transformer
using real observations (water content, acidity, etc.) and expert rules based
234 CHAPTER 10: Future Trends for Big Data Application in Power Systems
on linguistic expressions [58]; combination of auto-encoders and information
theoretic learning (mean shift algorithm) for condition diagnosis in power transformers with online monitoring of dissolved gases in oil [59]; nonpara-
metric regression that combines age and lifecycle data (e.g., health index, man-
ufacture, location) that gives asset-oriented failure rate, health condition, and risk factors analysis [60]. Data mining techniques can be also applied to other
assets, like distribution circuit breakers [61].
This research domain has the following challenges for further work:
(i) combine features generated by domain knowledge with “automatic” feature
extraction algorithms such as deep learning techniques, which might result in a large number of input variables; (ii) propose evaluation metrics that include
cost-sensitive actions, such as cost of false alarm, cost of missing failure, and
reward of detecting/predicting a failure; (iii) communicate results and uncer- tainty to the decision maker using appropriate data visualization techniques;
(iv) handle a low number of instances with failure mode that results in imbal-
anced datasets for classification problems; (v) apply nonparametric techniques, in contrast to parametric techniques such as the Weibull model.
Renewable and conventional generation companies, with the advent of Inter- net of Things (IoT) technology, are hiring data scientists to develop new predic-
tive maintenance and conditioning monitoring data-driven methods for their
assets. The high cost of offshore wind power plant’s maintenance demands for new monitoring and maintenance planning methods [62]. Machine learning
algorithms, such as neural networks and Gaussian processes, can be used to
construct power curves (wind speed vs power) from SCADA measurements and control charts for the individual turbine monitoring using standard x chart
plots and extreme value statistics that generate alarm thresholds [63]. Short-
term probabilistic forecast of weather variables can be integrated in decision- making problems under risk (cost-loss mode) for finding access windows for
offshore wind power plants maintenance [64].
Finally, new grid assets like battery storage and variable speed pump power storage will require similar methodologies to infer and predict the current
and future operating conditions based on several data sources.
5 ELECTRICITY MARKETS
The electricity market can be divided into two different types: the spot market, where the electrical energy is traded for immediate physical delivery, and the
futures market, where the delivery is at a later date and normally does not
involve physical delivery. The futures market is normally used for risk hedging.
Presently, the research work is concentrated in designing new market rules and
frameworks to boost the Smart Grid paradigm and integrate the active demand-
2355 Electricity Markets
side participation. For instance, studying the effect on the economic efficiency
of the day-ahead market from load shifting behavior of consumers with price- responsive bids [65] and simulating a demand response electricity market with
price-responsive commercial buildings by using agent-based modeling [66].
The trend at the European level is the construction of pan-European electricity
markets by increasing the interconnection capacity between countries. This will
make the analysis of the stochastic dependency of spot prices at the European level very important [67]. Therefore, tools for a spatial-temporal analysis of dis-
tributed price time series will be needed. Moreover, in countries with locational
marginal prices (such as United States) the spatial-temporal pattern of market prices encompasses useful information, such as the network topology [68], and
can be explored by machine learning algorithms to unveil operating conditions
and improve price forecast.
The power system also has ancillary services separated from the electrical energy
market, which are used to support reliability and power quality of the power system. Related to this market, the main research goals consist in modeling
and forecasting the direction and magnitude of activated reserve and corre-
sponding price, which, in general, are irregular time series [69].
The optimal participation of market agents (from demand and supply side) in
these markets requires price forecast information for different time horizons,
ranging from hours-ahead to year-ahead. The literature is rich in point forecast- ing algorithms, but a lack of works related to the characterization of the uncer-
tainty associated to the price forecast was identified [70]. The increasing
penetration of variable renewable energy in the electricity market is impacting the market price level, e.g., zero and negative prices are starting to occur fre-
quently. Therefore, exogenous variables and their intrinsic uncertainty, such
as renewable power forecasts and weather predictions [71], should be modeled in price-forecasting algorithms. The dependency between prices of the spot and
futures markets is essential to design mid and long-term risk hedging strategies
and requires complex dependency structures from copula theory [72].
An important variable for understanding and forecasting the electricity market
dynamics is the market agents’ strategic bidding behavior. This information is useful for two different types of users, market competitors and energy regula-
tors. Market agents aim to derive the market bid that maximizes individual
profit taking into consideration the behavior of the competitors, such as using an analytical approach based on a state space model representation [73] or
metaheuristic optimization techniques [74]. Moreover, supply functions can
represent an optimal response to the offers of the other market participants [75] and its estimation can benefit from recent research in functional data anal-
ysis [76]. Another example of forecasting the competitors’ behavior is to fore-
cast the residual demand curve by combining feature reduction and machine learning algorithms or by using functional data time-series theory [77].
236 CHAPTER 10: Future Trends for Big Data Application in Power Systems
Energy regulators are mainly interested in assessing market efficiency and test-
ing new market rules and regulatory frameworks. Reinforcement learning algo- rithms are used to construct price and quantity bids of market agents (i.e., their
bidding strategies) that simulate a clearinghouse auction and assess market effi-
ciency [78]. Reinforcement learning strategies can also be employed to design data-driven bidding strategies that select the optimal quantile (i.e., minimizes
the expected value of imbalance costs) for a wind power plant participating in
the electricity market and that fully considers the forecast uncertainty [79]. This is a first approach toward data-driven market bidding strategies and autono-
mous decision-making aiming to explore historical data from the electricity
markets [80].
6 DEMAND-SIDE FLEXIBILITY
The smart grid paradigm combined with consumers’ engagement in demand
response (DR) programs will create new challenges in price forecasting. In this
context, forecasting extreme prices will be very useful to identify hours where demand reduction or shift is economically attractive and provides this informa-
tion to consumers and market agents [81]. In fact, with the growing number of
DR programs, the electricity consumption and price forecast problems cannot be detached, e.g., consumption reduction when electricity price is high. There-
fore, it will be necessary to forecast both variables by capturing their depen-
dency structure [82].
Estimating the elasticity (or response) of each consumer to dynamic retailing
prices is essential to control electricity consumption using a one-way price sig- nal and requires new load forecasting algorithms [83,84]. The big data chal-
lenge is not in the number of explanatory variables, it is in the number of
consumers to handle at the same time and in time-varying nature of consump- tion profiles. The trend is to design online learning and optimization
approaches that learn (in realtime) the price elasticity at the aggregated and
individual level [85,86]. For this problem, recent advances in online data pro- cessing can be applied, such as stochastic approximation and online convex
optimization [26,27].
Electricity retailers and aggregators, prior to engaging consumers in DR prod-
ucts, need to analyze large volumes of active power observations collected from
the smart meters. Yet, in some situations, the active power measurement might be only available for each LV feeder or secondary substation. The goal is to
estimate the degree of flexibility of each consumer to shift a share of its con-
sumption from one period to another. The current trend consists in applying data-driven algorithms to relate DR potential with exogenous variables (e.g.,
ambient temperature) or to uncover the parameters of thermal models per
the aggregated consumption. One example is to fit a physically based model
2377 Conclusions And Future Challenges
of the HVAC consumption with a linear regression framework and by using
active power per smart meter, aiming to estimate the DR potential of each potential client [87]. Another example is the application of regression models
with a set of explanatory variables (hour of day, set point change, and outside
air temperature) to estimate the DR potential [88]. Another area of research is to analyze large datasets of building energy data to evaluate building performance
and estimate energy savings due to retrofit actions [89].
Real-time control strategies of appliances can be data-driven and batch rein-
forcement learning (Q-learning) is a technology suitable for practical imple-
mentation. However, the aggregation of multiple controllable loads can result in a high-dimensional state space that leads to the curse of dimensionality.
Deep learning techniques developed to handle big data (e.g., large number
of input variables), such as convolutional neural networks [90], can be used as regression algorithm to approximate the state-action value function (or
Q-function) and extract state-time features [91], making it adequate for a
real-world application. This development is called deep reinforcement learning and can be applied to different power system-related problems, such as coor-
dinated voltage control and virtual power plants.
7 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE CHALLENGES
Technological solutions for metering and control are now available in the mar-
ket and installed in several large-scale pilots. The Internet of Things and smart grids concepts can be realized from the technological point of view and the
future challenges consist of data intelligent functions and new business models
on the top of the component, information and communication layers.
The future generation of big data functions will combine spatial-temporal
information and distributed learning techniques that exploit recent advances in high performance and distributed computing. The output should be prob-
abilistic information and with high value for integration in decision-aid
methods under risk. Deep learning techniques represent an added value for automatic feature extraction and reduction, but manual feature creation with
domain knowledge cannot be abandoned. Data-driven techniques are not
exclusively used for estimation and forecasting. Machine learning algorithms can be used to control grid assets, for instance embedded in reinforcement
learning techniques or to create surrogate models for complex physical systems.
The creation of new business models for knowledge extraction from data is also
expected in a near future. Some examples are analysis of the demand response
potential of grid users, big data preprocessing from grid sensors, large-scale simulation of electricity markets, and predictive maintenance of electrical
equipment. Forecasting of price, load, and renewable generation time series
is presently a business with high-technology readiness levels.
238 CHAPTER 10: Future Trends for Big Data Application in Power Systems
The potential for big data techniques in the power system industry is very high,
but several threats can be identified. In general, the quality of data is very low (e.g., high percentage of missing values and gross errors) and, in some cases, is
not available close to realtime (e.g., data transfer delays above 24 h). Moreover,
in general, power systems engineers have a lack of advanced knowledge in sta- tistics, which undermines the value of the new big data functions. Finally, large-
scale dissemination of “ready-to-use” machine learning libraries eases the
learning curve but, at the same time, may defer the interest in disruptive solu- tions as well as its industrialization.
Acknowledgments This work is financed by the ERDF—European Regional Development Fund through the Opera- tional Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation—COMPETE 2020 Programme,
and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e
a Tecnologia, within project ESGRIDS—Desenvolvimento Sustentável da Rede El�etrica Inteligente/
SAICTPAC/0004/2015-POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016434.
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- Future Trends for Big Data Application in Power Systems
- Introduction
- Transmission System
- Dynamic Behavior Analysis
- Steady-State Analysis
- TSO-DSO Cooperation
- Distribution System
- Monitoring and Situational Awareness
- Predictive Control and Management
- Asset Management
- Electricity Markets
- Demand-Side Flexibility
- Conclusions and Future Challenges
- Acknowledgments
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-11---On-Data-Driven-Approaches-for-_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-Pow.pdf
CHAPTER 11
On Data-Driven Approaches for Demand Response
Akin Tascikaraoglu Mugla Sitki Kocman University, Mugla, Turkey
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
This chapter presents a detailed investigation on the resources, use, and benefits of big data analytics
in smart grid activities that enable the participation of demand side in energy management. It starts by elucidating these activities called demand-side management and demand response (DR) and
their role in providing higher saving potential for both system operators and end users. It then
explains the use of big data management techniques in order to handle the huge amount of data
required for efficient DR applications. Afterward, the benefit of various clustering methods and clas- sification methods in DR applications is evaluated by classifying them into four main groups
according to their objectives. First, the role of big data analytics on the energy consumption behav-
ior of end users and on the electric load classification is examined. Then, the support of DR pro- grams relying on big data analytics is evaluated for demand and renewable energy generation
forecasting as well as dynamic pricing.
243
1 INTRODUCTION
Electric power demand has been steadily increasing across the world, with an
annual rate of nearly 4% during the last decade [1]. The yearly growth in total
demand poses various challenges to system operators such as optimizing oper- ational efficiency, and maintaining system stability and reliability. In order to
compensate the increasing power demand taking also the energy costs and
environmental concerns into account, higher penetration of renewable energy sources has been considered as one of the initial steps [2]. The integration of
intermittent and stochastic renewable energy into power systems, however,
has caused an additional uncertainty, which is already present in the systems due to daily variations of power demand, in providing the balance between
supply and demand. In order to manage this balance in all time periods, the
available generation facilities have been adapted to varying load demand since demand has been traditionally considered to be inelastic, i.e., cannot be inter-
rupted and deferred.
Smartgridenvironment,whichhasbeenrecentlyemergedasamodernizedpower
grid usingdigitalinformationandcommunication technologies,hasledtopower
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00011-5
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
244 CHAPTER 11: On Data-Driven Approaches for Demand Response
systems to be more adaptive to the increase of renewable energy penetration, and
enabled the participation of demand-side resources in energy savings and also in balancing services such as peak load leveling, valley filling, and frequency regula-
tion. These methods, referred to as demand response (DR) or in a broader sense
demand-side management (DSM) strategies, allow making use of the flexible demand from end users’ appliances for critical load conditions. In other words,
DR strategies aim to change the electric usage of end users when needed by adjust-
ing the price of electricity or providing incentives to them.
At the earliest stage, only large commercial and industrial consumers have been
considered for DR programs due to their high power capacities and already existing infrastructure for remote measurement and control. In the last years,
the application of these programs at household level and even a single appli-
ance level has been also enabled by the widespread use of smart grid technol- ogies. Together with the increase in DR implementations at high-resolution
level, load serving entities (LSEs) have faced new challenges such as collecting,
storing, and processing of such a huge amount of data, which generally includes power consumption of various appliances and a high number of res-
idential end users, in addition to the data from industrial and commercial con-
sumers. LSEs should also consider the expected (forecasted) consumption values of these consumers and expected generation values of available genera-
tion units, as well as the varying electric energy prices, in the decision-making
process of scheduling and resulting load reductions, which further complicates the data management problem. In order to handle such an enormous data so
that the savings potential for DR programs is maximized, LSEs have recently
started to employ “big data” management techniques.
Considering the increasing use of big data and its significant benefits within
smart grid environment, particularly in DR applications, this chapter of the book deals with the implementation of DR solutions and the state-of-the-art
methods already used or can possibly be used by LSEs in this regard. Particu-
larly, the benefits of various clustering methods and classification methods in determining optimal segmentation of consumers are examined. Besides, the
contributions of big data management techniques on improving the forecasts
of renewable energy generation and load demand are investigated referring the results presented in the literature. Furthermore, the support of DR programs
relying on big data mining and analysis is evaluated for dynamic pricing
applications.
The rest of the chapter is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the resources of
big data in smart grid context and Section 3 elucidates the implementations of big data analytics in DR applications and summarizes the challenges in the appli-
cation of big data-driven DR. The studies presented in the literature on using big
data in the management of demand side are presented and the real-world
2453 Big Data Applications In DR
implementations are reported in Section 4. Section 5 summarizes the most
important remarks and provides the directions for future studies on this topic.
2 SOURCES OF BIG DATA IN DR
The main source of big data in smart grids is the advanced metering infrastruc-
ture (AMI) which collects data from measuring units at the consumer side such as smart meters, smart thermostats, and sensors with different sampling and
reporting rates varying generally from seconds to 1 h. Given a grid with thou-
sands of data sources and that these devices collect information (e.g., power consumption, voltage, phase angles. etc.) from a great number of consumers,
mostly at a time-scale of 15 min, there will be a vast amount of data measured
per day or even per hour. In addition to the power and energy data, weather data might also improve the forecasting accuracies and therefore has an impor-
tant role in supporting the energy management. For instance wind speed and
direction data is used for the data-driven wind speed/power forecasting approaches, and solar irradiance and temperature data is used for solar power
forecasting approaches. Moreover, the advanced energy demand forecasting
approaches use different type of information, such as dwelling type, occupancy level, household income, and education level, for more accurate forecasts.
Besides, the geographic features of an area, which are taken from geographic
information system, might be used for more effective decisions in forecasting applications and also in power systems.
The characteristic of the big data used in smart grid environment can be given
using four different criteria that are abbreviated as 4V characteristics. The first characteristic is the volume of data, which has been significantly increased
together with the widely used advanced metering devices in power systems.
Handling a vast amount of data is a challenging task; however, it provides many opportunities at the same time. The second characteristic, namely velocity,
refers to the speed requirement for data collection and processing. The com-
plexity of the data in energy systems is characterized by variety and the value, which is the last characteristic, provides insights about the potential benefits of
data. Regarding the value of any data, it might be possible to determine its con- tribution for different objectives, such as increasing end-user participation into
DR programs, improving forecasting performance, and foreseeing end-user
energy consumption.
3 BIG DATA APPLICATIONS IN DR
Large-scale DR implementations have improved the conventional power sys-
tems in terms of various aspects such as integration of more renewable power,
246 CHAPTER 11: On Data-Driven Approaches for Demand Response
improving the efficiency of power transmission and distribution, enabling the
incorporation of large-scale storage systems, reducing the possibility of failure due to overloading and congestion, and providing the infrastructure required
for the connection of electric vehicles (EVs) to the distribution systems. Accord-
ing to their structure, DR programs are generally divided into two groups; those based on different electricity pricing approaches and those based on providing
incentives to the end users accepted to participate in programs.
In order to fully make use of the technologies given above, a huge amount of data
from both generation and consumption sides is collected in these environments.
In addition to its significant benefits, such a big data brings about also new chal- lenges and additional computational burden, which are shown in Fig. 1. First of
all, processing big data for real-time DR implementations requires advanced
measurement systems, high communication resources, and high storage capabil- ities since traditional measurement and collection units are not scalable for such
a finer granularity data, the bandwidth of available communication tools is
insufficient for acquisition of such a large data, and available storage units are deficient for higher amounts of data. The widely used technologies for these
commitments, such as centralized SCADA and client-server data network
models, however, are not scalable for such data-intensive applications.
As stated above, the data is collected by an AMI network in smart grids, which is
capable of measuring energy usage through smart meters as well as storing and analyzing the measured data. This network consists of different applications
such as home area networks (HANs) that allow the communication between
smart meters and electrical devices/appliances, and also enable to control the certain electrical devices via smart meters, neighborhood area networks
(NANs) that transfer the smart meter data collected from multiple HANs in
a neighborhood to utility (or a data concentrator unit (DCU)) for various ana- lyses, and wide-area networks (WANs) that transmit the data measured to cen-
tral control units and enable real-time wide-area monitoring, protection, and
control for effective power system operations. When it comes to communica- tion, the communication tools with a relatively low-frequency data transfer rate
(up to a few hundred kbps) and short coverage distance (up to hundreds of
meters) are generally sufficient for the HAN applications as these applications only consist of data transfers between appliances and a smart meter (or a con-
troller) within end-user premises [3,4]. Instead, HAN applications require
FIG. 1
General process of big data driven DR application.
2473 Big Data Applications In DR
secure communication with low-cost and low-power consumption. Hence the
technologies satisfying all the specifications mentioned above, such as IEEE802.15.4 (known as ZigBee), power line carrier (PLC), IEEE802.11
(known as Wi-Fi) and Z-wave, are mostly employed for HANs. On the contrary,
NAN applications require higher data transfer rate (up to tens of Mbps) and larger coverage distance (up to tens of km) since the data is transmitted between
a high number end users and a utility (or a data concentrator) in these appli-
cations [3,4]. Therefore, ZigBee and Wi-Fi mesh networks, PLC, IEEE802.16 m (known as WiMAX) and Cellular wireless networks such as GPRS and LTE are
mostly used for such long distances. Due to their much higher data transfer rate
(up to 1 Gbps) and much wider coverage distance (up to hundreds of km) requirements for dynamic power system stability control, Cellular and WiMAX
are generally used for WAN applications [3,4].
Various technological and economic constraints, however, have limited to
employ these advanced technologies in the case of a great amount of data.
Therefore, various techniques are applied to the data sets obtained with already available systems in order to exploit the data. With this objective, after the col-
lection and transmission processes, all the available data is stored using a mul-
tistage storage architecture where frequently accessed data is stored on the fastest storage system the LSE has and rarely accessed data is stored on the slow-
est storage system. Afterward, the quality of the stored data is checked using dif-
ferent methods such as bad data detection, the erroneous data are then corrected, and the missing data are imputed. Subsequently, the data coming
from different sources in different data types and specifications are integrated,
which is one of the most challenging tasks in processing of big data. It should be noted that energy big data are collected by various data acquisition devices and
applications, and hence the specifications of the data collected such as time and
space resolutions, size, structure, and format are different from each other. The integration of these heterogeneous and disparate data is, therefore, of great
importance for exploiting all the available data in big data analytics. Then, data
mining approaches are used for different purposes such as reducing the amount of data without losing information by the means of distributed data mining
and dimensionality reduction techniques. Lastly, using these large data sets
in real time for DR applications by extracting useful information from the data is another challenge, for which machine learning (ML) algorithms such as arti-
ficial neural networks (ANN) and Bayesian networks are generally used.
In addition to the methods mentioned above, advanced computing techniques,
such as virtualization and in-memory computing, are generally used in big data
management for the purpose of reducing the computational burden in all these stages. Alternatively, high computing resources can be used for handling fast
data processing in real-time applications. All these methods and tools enable
the big data obtained to effectively use for various objectives in smart grid
248 CHAPTER 11: On Data-Driven Approaches for Demand Response
environment. For instance, these data can provide effective decision support in
optimizing power generation and operation regarding the end users’ energy consumption behavior, can enable to choose the optimal consumers for DR
applications, can improve the forecasting performances of renewable energy
and load demand, and can also allow developing efficient dynamic pricing mechanisms. Each of these benefits is elucidated in the following subsections.
3.1 Assessment of Energy Consumption Behavior
One of the main factors affecting the efficiency of DR programs is the energy
consumption behavior of consumers. Knowing this behavior in time and
space domain can help system operators better manage the energy supply- demand balance in a power system. This information provides additional flexi-
bility to system operators in decision-making process of balancing services.
Furthermore, being aware of their consumption behavior through real-time communication with the system operator, the end users can also change their
consumption behavior and use energy wisely so that their energy cost is reduced.
The reason underlying the end users’ energy consumption behavior depends on
various objective and subjective factors. Objective factors can be gathered into
two groups: the internal factors, which are related to the house and household such as income and education levels, housing structure and occupancy, and the
external factors such as energy policies, energy prices and weather conditions.
The subjective factors are the factors that are based on the intention and aware- ness of end users.
A great deal of valuable information can be discovered from the energy mea-
surements, particularly using the temporal and spatial correlations among the households dispersed in a large area. Analyzing these data can help reveal
the energy use patterns of different consumers and the corresponding energy usage behavior can be determined. However, the large volume of data mea-
sured by smart meters causes various problems in terms of data transmission,
storage, and processing. Therefore, various approaches are used particularly in the real-world applications in order to decrease the data size providing that it
conveys almost the same information. These methods, called dimensionality
reduction methods, might facilitate the processing of data with an acceptable error, reduce the storage capacity required, decrease the related computational
times, and improve the performance by removing the redundant and repetitive
features. Various methods can be used to perform dimension reduction. For instance, any variable with missing values can be neglected if data imputation
is not possible for its data set, the variables having low variance or with high
correlations can be dropped, decision trees and random forest can be used for handling multiple challenges as given above, and the contribution of each
variable can be examined by adding them in an order.
2493 Big Data Applications In DR
3.2 Electric Load Classification
In DR applications, the information that can be used for improving the effi- ciency of the programs, such as energy consumption values of end users, gen-
eration values for conventional and renewable energy sources, energy prices
and weather conditions can be filtered, analyzed, and classified for different purposes. In terms of energy consumption, each consumer has a different reac-
tion to varying energy prices and other factors such as weather conditions and
time of day. A huge number of energy consumption patterns might, therefore, be gathered into predefined groups for developing effective marketing strategies
and providing personal energy services to the consumers. This process of data
partitioning is called as electric load classification.
In order to carry out an effective classification of loads with different profiles,
data mining, which is defined as the process of analyzing a data set, extracting the information required for special purposes, and converting the data into a
certain structure in order to use more effectively, is widely considered both
in the literature and real-world applications. Among data mining techniques, the approaches based on ML techniques have been widely used in load classi-
fication due to the effectiveness of these approaches in case there is no exact
mathematical model for describing the given data. Also, K-means, Fuzzy c-means, hierarchical clustering, and self-organizing map (SOM) methods have
especially shown good performances in load classification.
As a nonhierarchical clustering algorithm, K-means clustering method basically
partitions data sets into a certain number of clusters by taking the distance
between each observation and cluster center with the nearest mean into account. This method has a wide application area in the literature of load clas-
sification due to its simple and efficient operation; however, the selection of the
number of clusters and initial cluster centers might substantially affect the model performance. Contrary to this method, one data point can belong to
every cluster in Fuzzy c-means with some degree of belonging or membership.
These membership degrees are then updated iteratively in the minimizing pro- cess of objective function. Similar to K-means method, the selection of initial
cluster centers and cluster numbers is considered as a challenging task. Due to
its relatively simple implementation, hierarchical clustering method has recently gained increasing interest in load classification, in which each obser-
vation starts in a cluster by itself and then different clusters are merged with
respect to a distance (e.g., Euclidean distance of the furthest neighbors) among clusters until a termination criteria (known as agglomerative strategy), or on the
contrary, all observations start in one cluster and this cluster is then split into
clusters recursively (known as divisive strategy). An unsupervised neural net- work method, called SOM network, in which the weights are trained using a
competitive-learning algorithm differently from conventional ANN models,
250 CHAPTER 11: On Data-Driven Approaches for Demand Response
has also various applications in load classification and provides favorable
results for optimum factors such as network weights and neighborhood functions.
New methods, such as support vector clustering, iterative refinement clustering, honey bee mating optimization and follow the leader have been also recently
introduced for load classification. It can be also noted that the distributed data
analysis methods have started to be used widely as centralized frameworks require exchange of a large amount of data between measurement devices at
the end user side and main processor, which is economically not feasible.
Instead, decentralized data mining algorithms require smaller computational and communication resources.
3.3 Demand and Renewable Energy Generation Forecasting
Demand and renewable energy generation in power systems are unsteady and
affected by a high number of variable factors such as electricity prices and
weather conditions, which further complicates the application of DR programs. Demand, price, and renewable energy generation forecasts are, therefore, cru-
cial tools for effective DR applications. High-accuracy forecasts can reduce the
operating costs and improve the power system reliability by adjusting the gen- eration level of power plants at certain periods. These forecasts also help system
operators adjust the electricity prices taking into account the correlation
between demand and corresponding prices [5].
In order to achieve high accuracy forecasts, real-time exploitation of high
amounts of data is required. For instance, the demand forecasts are acquired
using historical demand data and various influencing factors including build- ing specifications such as its location, size and type, end user’s habits and usage
patterns, appliance specifications, socio-economic factors such as income and education level, and weather characteristics such as daily and seasonal changes
in temperature and humidity. The studies on demand forecasting have recently
focused on the forecasts at the household level, even at the level of a specific appliance, aligned with the advancements in data collection for these small-
scale units, which further increases the size of both input and output data. It
is also noted that the application of forecasting methods is expected to become wider in the context of DR in the near future together with the emerging tech-
nologies enabled by smart grids. For instance, the forecast of plug-in hybrid
electric vehicle charging load using the data of driver habits and travel pattern data analysis is considered as a promising research topic due to its potential
effect on efficient DR. Regarding the renewable (i.e., wind and solar) generation
forecasts, the inputs are generally composed of historical wind speed and solar irradiance data, other meteorological quantities such as wind direction, pres-
sure and temperature, and local terrain structure [6].
2513 Big Data Applications In DR
Three types of data are generally used as input in the forecasting applications in
smart grid environment: (i) historical data of the variable to be forecasted, (ii) historical data of different exogenous variables (e.g., electricity price infor-
mation for demand forecasts and temperature for renewable energy generation
forecasts), and (iii) the parameters that effect the variable to be forecasted (e.g., socio-economic factors for load forecasts and physical specifications of the
related area for renewable energy generation forecasts) [7]. Furthermore, the
data collected from the neighboring regions can also be incorporated into the input data sets in addition to the data collected from the point where
the forecasts will be performed. The historical data from both target and exog-
enous variables generally consist of the recent measurements. Nevertheless, the data corresponding to the forecasted period in the previous years (called similar
days) might be included in certain forecasting applications, particularly in the
case of relatively steady patterns of energy consumption and weather conditions [7].
The use of all three types of data or at least one or two types from different loca- tions converts the forecasting methods into multivariate models as shown in
Eq. (1):
yr ∗,v∗ t ¼
XR,V
r ¼ 1 v ¼ 1
Xp
i¼1 yr,vt�iØ
r,v i (1)
where yt r∗,v∗ is the target variable for time t, region r, and variable v. R and V are
the numbers of regions and variables, respectively. ∅i r,v represents regression
coefficients and p is model order. Eq. (1) can be given in an extended format as in Eq. (2) to clearly observe the amount of the data that might be used in
demand and renewable energy forecasting:
yr ∗,v∗ p + 1
yr ∗,v∗ p + 2
⋮ yr
∗,v∗ p + N
2 666664
3 777775 ¼
y1,1p … y 1,1 1
y1,1p + 1 ⋱ ⋮
⋮ y1,1p + N�1
⋱ …
⋮ y1,1N
…
…
…
…
�����������
�����������
yR,Vp … y R,V 1
yR,Vp + 1 ⋱ ⋮
⋮
yR,Vp + N�1
⋱
…
⋮
yR,VN
2 666666664
3 777777775
∅1,11 ⋮
∅1,1p
⋮ ⋮
∅R,V1 ⋮
∅R,Vp
2 666666666666666664
3 777777777777777775
(2)
where p+N represents the number of target variable datased in the training stage of the forecasting model. As seen from Eq. (2), the number of data
used in the regression coefficient vector would be equal to the total number
252 CHAPTER 11: On Data-Driven Approaches for Demand Response
of the observations to be included for each variable from different regions,
which implies a huge amount of data, especially with low time granularity,
and hence long training times (up to a few hours) and inaccurate forecasts. It should be noted that Eqs. (1), (2) show the data used for autoregressive-based
methods. The same input data sets can be also used in other data-driven forecasting methods such as other time series-based methods or ML-based
methods.
The amount of data can be further increased when the decomposition methods are used for improved forecasts by dividing the relatively complex data into
more meaningful components which are mostly easier to model [7]. For
instance, wavelet transform (WT) decomposes the time series into several sub- series depending on the decomposition level, which causes the input data to
increase by several times. For another decomposition model, called empirical
mode decomposition (EMD), the number of subseries might reach to a higher number compared to WT.
In order to deal with the problems caused by the use of a vast amount of data, while still ensuring a satisfactory level of accuracy, particularly in real-time
forecasting applications, variable selection (aka feature selection) methods
can be pointed out as one of the most effective methods. These methods basi- cally select the most relevant variables among a set of variables (e.g., time
factors such as the day of the week and the hour of the day, weather character-
istics such as temperature and pressure, etc.) with the objective of reducing the number of variables to be used in the model construction. Regarding the
type and characteristics of the data, different feature selection approaches such
as statistical analysis, correlation analysis, principle component analysis, sensi- tivity analysis, and load curve analysis can be used. As one of these approaches,
mutual information (MI) criterion examines the MI of each input with the
variable to be forecasted and order them according to their information value. The values with higher information values are then used only in the forecasting
process. Various optimization methods are also very effective in the selecting of
the most beneficial features and removing the features with no or little influ- ence on the forecasting performance. These methods can obtain the relation
between different influential factors and the target variable depending on the
time series data, which is of great importance in building the forecasting models. Particle swarm optimization model inspired by the flocking behavior
of the birds, and ant colony optimization model inspired by the behavior of
ants in finding the shortest path are the widely used methods in determining the influential factors. Information entropy theory is also widely employed
in the literature for the purpose of reducing the irrelevant variables and thus
improving convergent speed.
Preprocessing of historical time series by data clustering methods can also
provide good results in forecasting applications. Each clustered group can then
2533 Big Data Applications In DR
be modeled with a different method. This task is generally carried out using
optimization algorithms mentioned above. Also, SOM network is mostly used for the partition of input data sets into a number of subsets with similar char-
acteristics as these methods provide data clustering without prior knowledge
about the classifying criteria (called unsupervised learning). Each partitioned subset is then applied to different forecasting methods, which are generally
based on ML approaches such as ANN and SVM, considering their data
characteristics.
The data collected from different sensors or meters might include some errone-
ous data due to various factors such as bad weather conditions, malfunctioning of these devices, and the problems in data transmission and storage. These data
might considerably degrade the performance of the forecasting methods. The
potential corrupted or noisy data are therefore filtered out before the forecast- ing process using different thresholds and criteria. In other words, when the
magnitude of the data is over or under a predefined threshold, which is gener-
ally defined in the training stage, these data are removed from the input dataset. As one of these filtering methods, the use of a zero phase filter, which is a special
case of a linear-phase filter, generally provides favorable results in removing the
data that are highly close to the original data. It is noted that it might not be possible to differentiate the erroneous data from the original data for certain
cases. In these cases, human intervention is generally required in addition to
the filtering models used.
3.4 Dynamic Pricing
Providing electricity at different prices for each hour might lead to considerable
increases and decreases in the total energy consumption in power systems due to the responses of consumers to this variable pricing. This method, called
dynamic pricing or real-time pricing, can improve the reliability of power sys-
tems by changing the energy consumption behaviors of end users through the smart meters that can receive price information from the utilities. From the end-
user perspective, the main benefit of dynamic pricing is that the prices of the
energy used (i.e., the electricity bills) can be reduced considerably while con- trolling the demand or allowing system operators to control the demand in
contracted periods. The end users can shift the operations of the certain loads
to off-peak hours where the prices are relatively lower in order to realize this objective, which can be formulated as shown in Eq. (3):
minimizeE ¼ X t
Pgrid,t � ΔT � λbuy,t (3)
where Pgrid,t is the power drawn from the grid, ΔT is the time granularity, and λbuy,t is the price of the electricity within the corresponding time interval.
254 CHAPTER 11: On Data-Driven Approaches for Demand Response
In Eq. (3), ΔT has a great impact on the amount of the data used in the analyses. When this value is on the scale of a few seconds, which is generally required by
power system operational conditions, the amount of data will be highly large. On the contrary, a ΔT value of 10 or 15 min can be generally indicated as suf- ficient for residential applications. As shown in Eq. (4), the total load used by commercial, industrial, and domestic end users in power systems consists of
flexible loads, which can be curtailed when required, and inflexible loads that
are crucial for the operation of equipment in commercial/industrial buildings and for the end-user comfort in residential households. These inflexible loads
can also be classified into two different classes according to their control avail-
ability: (i) interruptible loads that can be turned off for a certain time period (generally on the scale of minutes), and (ii) deferrable loads that can be sched-
uled to be used after a certain time period (generally on the scale of hours).
Pgrid,t ¼ Pinflex_load,t + Pflex_load,t (4)
The literature and real-world implementations on dynamic pricing-based pro- grams have been mostly focused on the investigation of the benefits of these
programs on commercial and industrial end users due to their relatively higher
portion of demand and more predictable power profiles. The share of the elec- trical energy consumed in residential premises, however, has recently increased
significantly in the total energy consumption, which has oriented the studies
toward this field [8]. Compared to the studies on commercial/industrial build- ings, the studies on the residential level contain a considerably higher amount
of data as the measurement of different controllable appliances is included in
the data sets. Besides, in order to accurately model the effects of dynamic pric- ing on the residential consumer energy consumption behavior, i.e., when and
why they turn on or off the appliances or shift their use, interviews and ques-
tionnaires are also required in addition to the historical load data. The exam- ination of such a huge data including responses to generally over 100 questions
(e.g., number and specifications of the appliances, their usage frequencies and
operation times, occupancy level of the house, etc.) from a few hundred thou- sand consumers might provide a valuable information that can be used effec-
tively in regulating the hourly prices of energy supplied to the consumers.
Furthermore, observing the responses of the end users to the changing prices and modeling these responses for later use in energy management has gained
importance in the last years. All these data-intensive tasks are highly cumber-
some and subject to challenges in dealing with the huge amount of data. It is therefore obvious that big data analytics will be a key role in effective dynamic
pricing implementations in the near future. There are currently only a few stud-
ies in the literature on the use of big data analytics for dynamic pricing imple- mentations; however, it can be indicated as a promising topic, which will be
more common together with the widespread use of dynamic pricing programs
all over the world.
2554 Real-World Applications And Research On Big Data-Driven Demand Response
4 REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS AND RESEARCH ON BIG DATA-DRIVEN DEMAND RESPONSE
As explained above, data mining and ML techniques are essential for DR pro-
grams in processing and analyzing of immense amounts of data from smart
meters and sensors. With this objective, various studies have been presented in the literature, particularly in the last decade on the resources of big data
and relevant data management techniques in energy sector.
In Ref. [9], a cloud-based software program was developed for dynamic
demand response (D2R) concept that was applied in University of South
California as a pilot microgrid project. Together with the data management techniques, the refined data are then used for demand and curtailment forecast-
ing models in order to assess the DR potential in the pilot project in Ref. [9]. The
increasing impact of machine-to-machine (M2M) communication concept on data amount in smart grid context was analyzed in Ref. [10] together with a dis-
cussion on the exact areas where data mining and ML techniques can play a vital
role. Besides, a new technique for data management in M2M communication, specifically regarding smart meters, was also proposed in Ref. [10]. In order to
reduce the smart meter data size and hence to provide an increase in computing
speed, dimensionality reduction was used in Ref. [11] using random projec- tion. For the classification of consumer load curves, an approach based on
ANN was proposed in Ref. [12]. For effective data harvesting, an online cluster-
ing based on unsupervised learning techniques has been proposed in Ref. [13]. Distributed data analysis methods were used in Ref. [14] for energy demand
forecasting. Several technical studies that cannot be all considered here also
offered new technical developments in big data management in smart grid con- text including demand-side activities.
Furthermore several review papers have been also presented in the literature. In Ref. [15], a comprehensive literature survey on smart energy management
based on big data was provided together with the detailed analysis on charac-
teristics of big data and the relevant process methods for demand-side actions in energy sector. It was stated in Ref. [15] that the main resource of big data in
DR applications is the AMI as mentioned previously. As the penetration of
smart meters increases rapidly, the amount of data collected from smart meters can become significantly huge. As a sample analysis, a simple load demand data
collection with 15 min resolution from 1 million smart meters can lead to
nearly 3 k terabytes of data in a single year [15]. Besides, a comprehensive sur- vey on literature as well as industrial companies that provides products and ser-
vices on big data management was also provided in Ref. [15].
Another review paper in Ref. [16] investigated the contribution of energy big
data on the analysis of various aspects of residential energy consumption
256 CHAPTER 11: On Data-Driven Approaches for Demand Response
behavior, which is of great importance particularly for DR applications. The
social issues in energy consumption from information science point of view were given a specific importance in Ref. [16] in order to enhance the under-
standing of the big data resources in demand-side activities. In this context,
big data issues and challenges faced in dynamic energy management within smart grid vision were also discussed in Ref. [17]. A general overview of data
processing methods in this regard was also provided in Ref. [17] together with
the discussion on possible upcoming concepts. Different and detailed survey studies on big data in smart grid vision can also be found in Refs. [18–20].
Together with the penetration of DR solution in the overall world [21], the applications of big data managements for smart power system operation have
increased gradually in recent times. Several companies have announced solu-
tions and software structures in this regard. IBM offers several customized infra- structure solutions for big data management specifically in power system
operation. The provided solutions generally consider how the big data can be
lessened and transformed into meaningful outputs for power system partici- pants from operators to end users [22]. T-Systems provides several concepts
for different big data imperatives of power system participants from big data
security to rapid big data transition approaches for smart grid management, forecasting, etc. [23]. VPS presents a software namely VPS ICE for power system
operation and discusses that the developed software can be combined with any
commercial off-the-shelf hardware for use in energy management in any scale within power systems [24]. Siemens offers a big data analysis tool on smart
metering, namely EnergyIP, for utilities and power system operators [25]. Ener-
gyIP tool provides analysis on data patterns for notifying energy theft, identify- ing vulnerable or overloaded devices and plants and forecasting load in different
levels. Even not specified for power system operation, several companies such as
Cisco [26] and Hewlett Packard Enterprise [27] have recently provided software- based solutions for big data management for several areas of use. A different and
also detailed survey on companies providing big data management solutions
especially for power system operation can also be found in Ref. [15].
Many real-world applications also exist in this area. The Pacific Northwest
Smart Grid Demonstration Project has been realized in United States with 60,000 participants in five different states, which is estimated to provide several
terabytes of data over 2 years [28]. It was also discussed in this project that the
direct load control (DLC) applications considering single appliances (air con- ditioners, clothing dryers, water heaters, etc.) would add significant additional
burden from data point of view [28]. Electric Power Board (EPB) as the city-
owned utility of Chattanooga, Tennessee, US and Oak Ridge National Labora- tory collaborate on a project including big data management software for man-
aging the aim of enhancing smart grid concept including demand-side actions
for around 170,000 commercial and residential customers EPB serves [29]. Spanish power utility Viesgo and Siemens have collaborated on using Siemens’
2575 Summary And Future Prospects
EnergyIP tool for managing the big data from the smart meters which is aimed
to cover around 700,000 power customers Viesgo serves [30]. EnergyIP tool has also been used in German Energy Market for different purposes under the col-
laboration of Siemens and German authorities [25]. “Pecan Street Smart Grid
Project” has been developed in Austin, Texas, United States for the demonstra- tion of demand-side activities and the project demands very detailed usage and
therefore management of data from several renewable energy sources, loads in
end-user premises, etc. [31]. Many more pilot and real-world applications of big data management concepts specifically developed for demand-side actions
in smart grid environment exist also in different areas of the world and the need
for big data management is expected to boost considerably in parallel to the development of more developed DR solutions even reaching to the plugs or
single appliances of residential end users.
5 SUMMARY AND FUTURE PROSPECTS
Higher amounts of data have been increasingly accumulating within the smart grid environments together with wider applications of advanced measurement,
communication, and control technologies. The emerging challenge of taking
advantage of these data, called big data, has been investigated in two different areas: Generation side management (including renewable energy management)
and DSM. Compared to the generation side management, it can be indicated that
DSM includes significantly higher amounts of data due to the large number of end-use metering devices. DSM strategies have gained increasing interest in
the last years since these programs have showed promising results in affecting
the energy consumption behavior of end users, particularly at peak periods, through price- or incentive-based methods. These methods allow the system
operators to apply various dynamic pricing schemes, and also induce end users
to mitigate their consumption during peak periods, postpone the working times of certain appliances, and even replace the energy-inefficient appliances. These
changes, therefore, satisfy the desired changes in demand level.
It can be indicated that the energy consumption data collected are one of the
most important resources to apply the DR programs efficiently. These data,
therefore, should be of high quality, that is, it should not contain any missing and erroneous data, which is almost not possible under real conditions due to
the temporary faults in smart meters, sensors, and related communication tools.
In this context, big data management techniques can be indicated as essential tools for exploiting the available data. These techniques can define the patterns
of different data sets, determine the correlations among them (load classifica-
tion), and complete and correct the required parts of data using prediction and imputation approaches (predictive analytics, bad data detection, and cor-
rection), each of which is vital importance for optimizing the DR implementa-
tions such as energy generation scheduling and setting real-time energy price.
258 CHAPTER 11: On Data-Driven Approaches for Demand Response
Big data approaches have been effectively used in different areas; however,
using them in smart grid environment, particularly in DR implementations, is a challenging task since it is required to select, classify, analyze, and forecast
a massive amount of data in real time. In this chapter of the book, the chal-
lenges faced or to be faced in the DR implementations using big data have been investigated. It is noted that big data-driven DR causes also some problems in
addition to its significant benefits aforementioned. For instance, the problems
about the data security have become more challenging together with the increasing amount of data in DR applications. Therefore, traditional methods
which have been widely used in different areas, such as encryption and data
anonymization, have started to use in smart grid environments recently for the purpose of ensuring data confidentiality and achieving various services such
as authentication and access control.
Acknowledgment The author would like to thank Dr. Ozan Erdinç from Yildiz Technical University for his valuable suggestions.
References [1] US Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook 2016, May 2016.
[2] A. Tascikaraoglu, B.M. Sanandaji, K. Poolla, P. Varaiya, Exploiting sparsity of interconnections
in spatio-temporal wind speed forecasting using wavelet transform, Appl. Energy 165 (2016) 735–747.
[3] P. Siano, Demand response and smart grids—a survey, Renew. Sust. Energ. Rev. 30 (2014)
461–478.
[4] M. Kuzlu, M. Pipattanasomporn, S. Rahman, Communication network requirements for
major smart grid applications in HAN, NAN and WAN, Comput. Netw. 67 (2014) 74–88.
[5] N.G. Paterakis, A. Taşcıkaraoğlu, O. Erdinc, A.G. Bakirtzis, J.P. Catalão, Assessment of demand-response-driven load pattern elasticity using a combined approach for smart house-
holds, IEEE Trans. Ind. Inf. 12 (4) (2016) 1529–1539.
[6] A. Tascikaraoglu, B. Sanandaji, G. Chicco, V. Cocina, F. Spertino, O. Erdinc, N. Paterakis,
J.P. Catalao, Compressive Spatio-temporal forecasting of meteorological quantities and pho-
tovoltaic power, IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy 7 (3) (2016) 1295–1305.
[7] A. Tascikaraoglu, M. Uzunoglu, A review of combined approaches for prediction of short-term
wind speed and power, Renew. Sust. Energ. Rev. 34 (2014) 243–254.
[8] O. Erdinç, A. Taşcıkaraoğlu, N.G. Paterakis, Y. Eren, J.P. Catalão, End-user comfort oriented day-ahead planning for responsive residential HVAC demand aggregation considering
weather forecasts, IEEE Trans. Smart Grid 8 (1) (2017) 362–372.
[9] Y. Simmhan, S. Aman, A. Kumbhare, R. Liu, S. Stevens, Q. Zhou, V. Prasanna, Cloud-based
software platform for big data analytics in smart grids, Comput. Sci. Eng. 15 (4) (2013) 38–47.
[10] Z. Fan, Q. Chen, G. Kalogridis, S. Tan, D. Kaleshi, in: The power of data: data analytics for
M2M and smart grid, In 2012 3rd IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe
(ISGT Europe), October, IEEE, 2012, pp. 1–8.
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[11] A.D. Martins, E.C. Gurjão, in: Processing of smart meters data based on random projections, In
Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Latin America (ISGT LA), 2013 IEEE PES Conference on, 2013, April, pp. 1–4.
[12] M.N.Q. Macedo, J.J.M. Galo, L.A.L. de Almeida, A.D.C. Lima, Demand side management
using artificial neural networks in a smart grid environment, Renew. Sust. Energ. Rev. 41 (2015) 128–133.
[13] A. Monti, F. Ponci, in: Power grids of the future: why smart means complex, In Complexity in. Engineering, 2010. COMPENG’10, IEEE, February, 2010, pp. 7–11.
[14] R. Mallik, N. Sarda, H. Kargupta, S. Bandyopadhyay, Distributed data mining for sustainable
smart grids, Proc. ACM SustKDD 11 (2011) 1–6.
[15] K. Zhou, C. Fu, S. Yang, Big data driven smart energy management: from big data to big
insights, Renew. Sust. Energ. Rev. 56 (2016) 215–225.
[16] K. Zhou, S. Yang, Understanding household energy consumption behavior: the contribution
of energy big data analytics, Renew. Sust. Energ. Rev. 56 (2016) 810–819.
[17] P.D. Diamantoulakis, V.M. Kapinas, G.K. Karagiannidis, Big data analytics for dynamic energy
management in smart grids, Big Data Res. 2 (3) (2015) 94–101.
[18] D. Alahakoon, X. Yu, Smart electricity meter data intelligence for future energy systems: a sur- vey, IEEE Trans. Ind. Inf. 12 (1) (2016) 425–436.
[19] A. Vasilakos, J. Hu, Energy big data analytics and security: challenges and opportunities, IEEE
Trans. Smart Grid. 7 (5) (2016) 2423–2436.
[20] H. Jiang, K. Wang, Y. Wang, M. Gao, Y. Zhang, Energy big data: a survey, IEEE Access 4 (2016)
3844–3861.
[21] N.G. Paterakis, O. Erdinç, J.P. Catalão, An overview of demand response: key-elements and
international experience, Renew. Sust. Energ. Rev. 69 (2017) 871–891.
[22] IBM Solutions for Big Data Analytics in Power Systems. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/uk/
power/solutions/bigdata-analytics/.
[23] T-Systems–SmarterEnergyManagement: IntelligentMonitoringofPowerUsage,BigDataAnalysis for Utilities. https://www.t-systems.com/blob/198454/6ab7d26105862dc24295d3fb92392b2c/
dl-usecase-energy-data.pdf.
[24] VPS ICE Software Platform. http://virtualpowersystems.com/the-platform.
[25] Siemens website: Siemens expands data analysis tool for smart metering by adding big
data option. http://www.siemens.com/press/en/pressrelease/?press¼/en/pressrelease/2016/ energymanagement/pr2016020154emen.htm&content¼EM.
[26] Cisco: Big Data. http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/data-center-virtualization/big-data/
index.html.
[27] Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Big Data Solutions. https://www.hpe.com/us/en/solutions/big-
data.html.
[28] FORBES: Big Data Meets The Smart Electrical Grid. http://www.forbes.com/sites/
tomgroenfeldt/2012/05/09/big-data-meets-the-smart-electrical-grid/#2b14e6f91adc.
[29] E&E News: Big Data Means Big Challenges for Utilities. http://www.eenews.net/stories/
1060018115.
[30] Siemens software will manage smart meter data for Spanish power utility. http:// www.siemens.com/press/en/pressrelease/?press¼/en/pressrelease/2016/energymanagement/ pr2016020154emen.htm&content%5B%5D¼EM.
[31] A. Tascikaraoglu, B.M. Sanandaji, Short-term residential electric load forecasting: a compres-
sive spatio-temporal approach, Energy Build. 111 (2016) 380–392.
- On Data-Driven Approaches for Demand Response
- Introduction
- Sources of Big Data in DR
- Big Data Applications in DR
- Assessment of Energy Consumption Behavior
- Electric Load Classification
- Demand and Renewable Energy Generation Forecasting
- Dynamic Pricing
- Real-World Applications and Research on Big Data-Driven Demand Response
- Summary and Future Prospects
- Acknowledgment
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-12---Topology-Learning-in-Radial-Dis_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-Po.pdf
CHAPTER 12
Topology Learning in Radial Distribution Grids
Deepjyoti Deka, Michael Chertkov Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States
261
OVERVIEW CHAPTER
Accurate estimation of the state and topology of the distribution grid is hindered by the limited
placement of real-time flow meters and breaker statuses at distribution grid lines. In recent years, increasing presence of smart devices and sensors at households have made measurements of con-
sumption and voltages available at distribution buses. This chapter discusses greedy algorithms to
learn the grid topology using voltage measurements collected at a subset of the buses in the distri-
bution grid. The distribution grids are operated in a radial topology. This topological restriction leads to provable trends in voltage second moments (covariances) and enables the design of our
learning algorithms. For the case where voltage measurements are available at all grid buses, our
framework does not require any additional information related to line impedances of grid lines or consumption statistics at buses to estimate the operational topology. Further in presence of such
information, we demonstrate guaranteed topology learning in scenarios with varying fraction of
“missing” buses that have no voltage measurements. The efficiency of the algorithms is highlighted
by their computational complexity that scales polynomially in the number of grid buses.
1 INTRODUCTION
Power grids are organized hierarchically into transmission and distribution grids. While transmission grids comprise of the high voltage lines, distribution
grids consist of the low and medium voltage lines that link the distribution sub-
stations to the load buses. The majority of static and dynamic operations of the grid as well as power markets hinge on accurate estimation of the grid state (bus
voltages, line flows, bus injections) and operational topology (breaker sta-
tuses). As the grid has redundant lines, estimation of the operational topology refers to determining the grid lines with breakers turned on. Traditionally, con-
trol and operation in the grid have emphasized on the transmission side as
majority of the bulk generation is connected there. Measurement devices, real-time devices in particular, have been largely deployed in the transmission
grid. The distribution grid has thus had sparse observability and real-time esti-
mation [1]. In recent times a plethora of smart controllable devices like plug-in electric vehicles, smart air-conditioners, residential batteries as well as renew-
able resources like roof-top solar panels has increasingly penetrated the
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00012-7
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
262 CHAPTER 12: Topology Learning in Radial Distribution Grids
distribution grid. To maximize the benefit derived from these resources and cre-
ate new opportunities like distribution grid market, real-time state and topol- ogy estimation in the distribution grid has gained prominence. It is noteworthy
that several of these new devices also provide local measurements of voltage
and power injection at their resident buses. Further, expansion efforts of mod- ern meters like phasor measurement units (PMUs) [2], micro-PMUs [3], fre-
quency monitoring networks into the distribution grid are slowly getting
traction. In this chapter, we study topology estimation in the distribution grid using high fidelity voltage measurements collected from smart meters placed at
a subset of the grid buses. It is worth mentioning that these measurements are
essentially nodal in nature. They do not include line measurements (line brea- kers, flows, etc.) that enable direct estimation of the topology.
Distribution grid topologies, in a majority of power grids, have one unifying feature. A typical distribution grid is operated as disjoint radial graphs, with
a substation bus at the root node and customers (load buses) at the nonroot
nodes of each tree. Switching from one radial layout to another is initiated through switching on and off breakers [4] in the available lines (see Fig. 1A
for the illustration). The goal of topology estimation is to estimate the current
tree structure in operation. Note that as the underlying graph of available lines in the grid is loopy, the number of candidate tree topologies that can be oper-
ational is large. Brute force (combinatorial) check of the true operational radial
topology consistent with the measurements collected is thus computationally
(A)
da
(ab) (db)
(be)
(e0)
b e
0
c
(B)
Da Tk
FIG. 1
(A) Distribution grid with four substations (large nodes). Operational lines are colored solid black,
nonoperational lines are marked dotted. (B) Nodes in a radial distribution grid. Nodes a and c are
descendants of node a. Dotted lines represent the paths from nodes a and d to the root node.
2631 Introduction
prohibitive. In this chapter we develop low complexity algorithms that circum-
vent this problem by exploring novel trends in second-order statistics of the col- lected nodal measurements. Further, such trends are able to estimate the grid
topology accurately even when measurements are collected from a subset of
the grid buses/nodes—a realistic feature as ubiquitous meter placement has still not been realized.
1.1 Prior Work
Learning the topology of power grids and distribution grids in particular is a growing area of research with several approaches being proposed in the
past. In [5], a maximum likelihood estimator with sparsity promoting reg-
ularizers is used to recover the grid structure using locational marginal prices. In [6], a model using bus phase angles as a Markov random field
for the DC power flow (PF) builds a dependency graph-based approach
to detect faults in grids. In work specific to radial grids, Bolognani et al. [7] considers grids where transmission lines have constant resistance to
reactance ratio and provides a learning algorithm that uses signs within
the inverse covariance matrix of voltage measurements. In [8], topology identification with limited measurements in a distribution grid with Gauss-
ian loads is used to design a machine learning estimate with approximate
schemes. Cavraro et al. [9] compares available time-series measurements from smart meters with a database of permissible signatures to identify
topology changes. Similar envelope-based comparison schemes have been used for parameter estimation [10, 11]. Available line flow measurements
have been used for topology estimation using maximum likelihood tests
in [12]. Conditional independence-based tests have been used to identify the radial topology in [13]. This has been extended to topology identifica-
tion from samples collected from grid dynamics in [14].
1.2 Technical Contribution
In this chapter we consider a setting where the observer has access to voltage
magnitude measurements at the grid nodes but no edge-based measurements.
We utilize a linearized PF model [4, 15–17] and demonstrate that under uncor- related nodal injections, the variance of voltage magnitude differences increase
along paths in the operational grid topology. Thus we present a computation-
ally fast spanning tree-based learning algorithm (originally outlined in [18]) for the operational tree using only voltage measurements at all nodes. Crucially,
the algorithm is agnostic to the individual nodal injections and parameters
of lines (resistances or reactances). Further, we extend our algorithm to the case with missing nodes/buses with no measurements, where the missing nodes are
264 CHAPTER 12: Topology Learning in Radial Distribution Grids
separated by at least three hops from each other and covariances of nodal
power consumption are available. We consider topology learning in another setting where voltage measurements are limited to the terminal nodes/leaves
(end-users) alone. All intermediate nodes are unobserved and hence assumed
to be missing nodes. Learning in this regime relies on functions of voltages at pair or triplets of terminal nodes that enable the construction of the operational
topology iteratively from the leaves onward to the substation node. Parts of the
results in this chapter are compiled from [4, 18, 19].
Our algorithm shows similar aspects as learning of tree-structured graphical
models in [20] using information distances derived from multivariate probabil- ity distributions. However, our approach relies on the Kirchhoff’s laws of phys-
ical network flows that relate nodal voltages and injections that, to the best of
our knowledge, do not have an analog in graphical model learning literature [20, 21]. Further, voltage magnitude-based weights used in our work are not
restricted to satisfy graph additivity unlike information distances in graphical
models.
The rest of this chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces nomencla-
ture and PF relations in the distribution grids. Section 3 describes key features (equalities and inequalities) of the statistics nodal voltage magnitudes that pro-
vide the machinery for our learning algorithms. Algorithm reconstructing oper-
ational spanning tree in the case of complete visibility (voltage magnitudes are observed at all nodes) is discussed in Section 4. Modification of the algorithm
for missing data (missing nodes separated by at least three hopes) is described
in Section 5. We also discuss topology learning when the available measure- ments are limited to leaves (end-users) with detailed examples. Simulation
of our learning algorithm on test radial networks is presented in Section 6.
Finally, Section 7 contains conclusions and discussion of future work.
2 DISTRIBUTION GRID: STRUCTURE AND POWER FLOWS
Radial Structure We represent the distribution grid by the graph G¼ðV,EÞ, where V is the set of buses/nodes of the graph and E is the set of all undirected lines/edges (open or operational). We denote nodes by alphabets (a, b, …) and the edge connecting nodes a and b by (ab). The operational grid has a “radial” structure as shown in
Fig. 1A. In general the operational grid is a collection of K disjoint trees.
In this chapter, we will focus on grids where the operational structure consists
of only one tree T with nodes VT and operational edge set ET �E. The tree’s
2652 Distribution Grid: Structure And Power Flows
root node has degree one (connected by one edge) and represents a substation
as shown in Fig. 1B. Let PaT denote the set of edges in the unique path from node a to the root node (reference bus) in treeT . A node b is termed as a descen- dant of node a ifPbT includes some edge (ac) connected to node a. We use DaT to denote the set of descendants of a and include node a in it by definition. If b is an immediate descendant of a (ðabÞ2ET ), we term a as parent and b as its child. Nodes that do not have any children, that is, DaT ¼fag are termed leaves.
PF Model Let zab ¼ rab + ixab denote the complex impedances of a line (ab) (i2 ¼�1). Here rab and xab are line resistance and reactance, respectively. The a.c. power injec-
tion at node a is given by Kirchhoff’s laws as
Pa ¼pa + iqa ¼ X
b:ðabÞ2ET
v2a �vavb expðiθa�iθbÞ z∗ ab
(1)
where the real-valued scalars, va, θa, pa, and qa denote the voltage magnitude, voltage phase, active, and reactive power injection, respectively, at node a. Vað¼va expðiθaÞÞ and Pa denote the nodal complex voltage and injection, respectively. Note that Eq. (1) is nonlinear and nonconvex. Under realistic
assumption that losses of both active and reactive power losses on each line of tree T is small, we ignore second-order terms in Eq. (1) to achieve the following linearization [4, 7, 18]:
pa ¼ X
b:ðabÞ2ET βabðθa�θbÞ+ gabðva�vbÞð Þ, qa ¼
X b:ðabÞ2ET
�gabðθa�θbÞ+ βabðva�vbÞð Þ (2)
where
gab¼ : rab x2 ab + r2
ab
, βab¼ : xab x2 ab + r2
ab (3)
This linearization assumes that phase difference between neighboring nodes and magnitude deviations from the reference voltage are small. Deka et al. [4]
show that Eqs. (2) are equivalent to the LinDistFlow model [15, 16, 22], if
deviations in voltage magnitude are assumed to be small. Further, if line resis- tances are equated to zero, they reduce to the DC PF model [23] used for
transmission grids. Similar to LinDistFlow model, Eqs. (2) are lossless with
sum power equal to zero ( P
a2VT Pa ¼0). Note that in our linearized model, active and reactive power injections are functions of difference in voltage mag-
nitudes and phases of neighboring nodes. Thus the analysis of the system is
reduced by measuring the voltage magnitude and phase at all buses relative to one specific bus termed as reference bus/node with voltage magnitude 1
p.u. and phase 0. As per convention, the substation is taken as the reference
266 CHAPTER 12: Topology Learning in Radial Distribution Grids
bus since its injection also balances the power injections in the remaining net-
work. Inverting Eqs. (2) for the reduced system (without the reference node),
we express voltages as a function of nodal power injections in the following vector form:
v¼H�1 1=r
p + H�1 1=x
q θ¼H�1 1=x
p�H�1 1=r
q (4)
We term this as the linear coupled power flow (LC-PF) model where p, q, v, and θ are the vectors of real power, reactive power injections, relative voltage magni- tudes, and phase angles, respectively, at the nonsubstation nodes. H1/r and H1/x are the reduced weighted Laplacian matrices for treeT where reciprocal of resis- tances and reactances are used, respectively, as edge weights. The reduction removes the row and column corresponding to the reference bus in the original
weighted Laplacian matrix. Due to the radial topology, the inverse of the
reduced weighted graph Laplacian matrix H1/r has the following structure (see Deka et al. [4] for the derivation).
H�1 1=r ða,bÞ¼
X ðcdÞ2PaT
T PbT
rcd (5)
Thus, the (a, b)th entry in H�1 1=r
is given by the sum of line resistances of edges that are included in the path to the root from either node. For node a and its
parent b in tree T (see Fig. 1B), it follows from Eq. (5) that
H�1 1=r ða,cÞ�H�1
1=r ðb,cÞ¼
rab if node c2DaT 0 otherwise
( (6)
We denote the mean of a random vector X by μX ¼½X�. For two random vectors X and Y, the covariance matrix is denoted by ΩXY ¼½ðX�μXÞðY�μYÞ
T�. Using the LC-PF model, the means and covariances of voltage magnitudes can be
related with those of active and reactive injection as follows:
μv ¼H�11=rμp + H �1 1=x
μq, Ωv ¼H�11=rΩpH �1 1=r
+ H�1 1=x
ΩqH�11=x + H �1 1=r
ΩpqH�11=x + H �1 1=x
ΩqpH�11=r (7)
In the next section we derive key results for functions of nodal voltages in a
radial distribution grid that will subsequently be used in the topology learning
algorithm.
3 PROPERTIES OF VOLTAGE MAGNITUDES IN RADIAL GRIDS
First, we make the following assumption regarding statistics of power injections at the nonsubstation grid nodes, under which our results hold.
2673 Properties Of Voltage Magnitudes In Radial Grids
Assumption 1. Power injections at different nodes are not correlated, while
active and reactive injections at the same node are positively correlated. Math-
ematically, 8a, b nonsubstation nodes
Ωqpða,aÞ> 0, Ωpða,bÞ¼Ωqða,bÞ¼Ωqpða,bÞ¼0
This is a valid assumption for many distribution grids due to independence
between different nodal load fluctuations and alignment/correlations between
samenode’sactiveandreactivepowerusage.NotethatAssumption1isapplicable when nodal injections are negative (loads), positive (due to local generation) or
a mixture of both. Now we consider the quantity ϕab ¼½ðva�μvaÞ�ðvb�μvbÞ� 2 ,
which measures the variance of the difference in voltage magnitudes between nodes a and b. Using Eq. (7), we have
ϕab ¼Ωvða,aÞ�2Ωvða,bÞ+ Ωvðb,bÞ (8)
Expressing Eq. (8) in terms of the four matrices that constitute Ωv leads to the following
ϕab ¼ X d2T
H�11=r a, dð Þ�H �1 1=r b, dð Þ
� �2 Ωp d, dð Þ+ H�11=x a, dð Þ�H
�1 1=x b, dð Þ
� �2 Ωq d, dð Þ
+ 2 H�1 1=r
a, dð Þ�H�1 1=r
b, dð Þ � �
H�1 1=x
a, dð Þ�H�1 1=x
b, dð Þ � �
Ωpq d, dð Þ (9)
This relation is important as we use it to identify inequality trends and equality relations for ϕab that we use in our learning algorithms. The next result iden- tifies order in ϕab along the radial grid.
Theorem 1. For three nodes a6¼b 6¼c in grid tree T , ϕab < ϕac holds for the following cases:
1. Node a is a descendant of node b and node b is a descendant of node c
(see Fig. 2A). 2. Nodes a and c are descendants of node b and the path from a to c passes through
node b (see Fig. 2B).
3. Node c is a descendant of node b and node b is a descendant of node a (see Fig. 2C).
The proofs for the first two cases can be found in [4], while that of the third case
is presented in [18]. Specifically for adjacent nodes in T , the following results show equality expressions involving ϕ.
Theorem 2. Let (ab) and (bc) be operational edges in T
1. If node a is the parent of node b (see Fig. 2C) then
ϕab ¼ P
d2DbT r2abΩpðd,dÞ+ x
2 abΩqðd,dÞ+ 2rabxabΩpqðd,dÞ
(A)
a
b
c
Da Tk
Db Tk
Dc Tk
(B)
a
b
c Da
Tk
Db Tk
Dc Tk
(C)
b
a
c
Da Tk
Db Tk
Dc Tk
(D)
k
k1
k2
a b
c
ra k2
FIG. 2
Distribution grid tree with substation/root node represented by large node. (A) Node a is a descendant of node b, node b is a descendant of node c. (B) Nodes a and c are
descendants of node b along disjoint subtrees. (C) Node c is a descendant of node b, node b is a descendant of node a. (D) Nodes a and b are leaf nodes with common
parent k1. r k2 a is the sum of resistances on path from a to k2.
2 6 8
C H A P T E R
1 2 :
T o p o lo g y L e a r n in g in
R a d ia l D is tr ib u tio
n G r id s
2693 Properties Of Voltage Magnitudes In Radial Grids
2. If node b is the parent of node c and child of node a (see Fig. 2C), then
ϕac ¼ X d2DcT
rab + rbcð Þ2Ωp d, dð Þ+ xab + xbcð Þ2Ωq d, dð Þ+ 2 rab + rbcð Þ xab + xbcð ÞΩpq d, dð Þ
+ X
d2DbT �D c T
r2abΩp d, dð Þ+ x 2 abΩq d, dð Þ+ 2rabxabΩpq d, dð Þ
(10)
3. If node b is the parent of both nodes a and c (see Fig. 2B), then
ϕac ¼ X d2DaT
r2abΩp d, dð Þ+ x 2 abΩq d, dð Þ+ 2rabxabΩpq d, dð Þ
+ X d2DcT
r2bcΩp d, dð Þ+ x 2 bcΩq d, dð Þ+ 2rbcxbcΩpq d, dð Þ
(11)
Proof
1. Use Eq. (6) in Eq. (9) as (ab) is an edge. 2. Use Eq. (6) in Eq. (9) as (ab), (bc) are edges and consider different
descendant sets.
3. As (ab) and (bc) are operational edges, the only node d such that ðH�1
1=r ða,dÞ�H�1
1=r ðc,dÞÞ 6¼0 are either descendants of a (setDa) or of c (set
Dc) that are disjoint. Using this in the formula for ϕac in Eq. (9) gives us the relation. □
It is worth mentioning that all three statements in Theorem 2 involve line impedances corresponding to edges (ab) and (bc) only and injections at their
descendants. This is critical in the search for missing nodes in our topology
learning algorithms. Finally we discuss another result that relates the variance of voltage magnitude differences at groups of three nodes that are leaves but
possibly separated from each other.
Theorem 3. Let terminal nodes a and b have common parent node k1. Let c be another terminal node such that c,k1 2Dk2 and Pk1 \Pc ¼Pk2 for some intermediate node k2 (see Fig. 2D). Let rk2a and x
k2 a denote the sum of resistance and reactance, respectively,
on lines on the path from node a to node k2, that is, r k2 a ¼
P ðefÞ2Pa�Pk2
ref , xk2a ¼
P ðefÞ2Pa�Pk2
xef . Define r k2 b , rk2
k1 , etc., in the same way.
ϕac�ϕbc ¼Ωpða,aÞððrk2a Þ 2�ðrk2
k1 Þ2Þ+ Ωqða,aÞððxk2a Þ
2�ðxk2 k1 Þ2Þ
+ Ωpqða,aÞðrk2a xk2a �r k2 k1 xk2 k1 Þ�Ωpðb,bÞððrk2b Þ
2�ðrk2 k1 Þ2Þ
+ Ωqðb,bÞððxk2b Þ 2�ðxk2
k1 Þ2Þ+ Ωpqðb,bÞðrk2b x
k2 b �rk2
k1 xk2 k1 Þ
(12)
270 CHAPTER 12: Topology Learning in Radial Distribution Grids
The proof for this result relies on expansion of the expression on the left and
using similar techniques as the previous theorem. Check Deka et al. [19] for exact details. Theorem 3 shows that the difference in ϕ between a leaf node (node c here) and two sibling leaves (nodes a and b) depends on injections
only at nodes a and b. Further the lines whose impedances appear on the right-hand side of Eq. (12) are (ak1), (bk1) and the ones on the path from
node k1 to k2. This will be used in learning the path from terminal pairs with
common parent (here a and b) to the root iteratively, when missing nodes are present.
4 TOPOLOGY LEARNING WITH FULL OBSERVATION
Given an underlying loopy graph with edge set E (possibly complete), the goal of topology learning is to estimate the operational edge set ET in radial grid T . We first discuss the case where voltage magnitude measurements are available at all nodes.
Theorem 4. Let the weight of each permissible edge ðabÞ2E of the underlying loopy graph be ϕab ¼½ðva�μvaÞ�ðvb�μvbÞ�
2 . Then operational edge set ET in radial grid
T forms the minimum weight spanning tree in the underlying graph.
Proof. From Theorem 1, it is clear that for each node a, the minimum value of ϕab along any path in T (toward or away from the root node) is attained at its immediate neighbor b on that path, connected by edge ðabÞ2ET . The mini- mum spanning tree for the original loopy graph with ϕ’s as edge weights is thus given by the operational edges in the radial tree. □ Note that if node a is taken as the substation/root node (va ¼ 1), the weight of any edge (ab) is given by ϕab ¼Ωv(b, b). In the spanning tree construction, the root is thus connected to the node with lowest variance of voltage
magnitude.
Algorithm 1. We consider input as voltage magnitude readings for all
nonsubstation buses in the system and compute ϕab for all permissible edges ðabÞ2E. Algorithm 1 determines the operational edge-setET by the minimum spanning tree. Note that Algorithm 1 does not need any information on line parameters
(resistances and reactances) or on statistics of active and reactive nodal power consumption. If impedances of lines in E and phase angle measurements at all nodes are known, Eqs. (2), (7) can subsequently estimate means and covari-
ances of each node’s power injections as well.
ALGORITHM 1 MINIMUM WEIGHT SPANNING TREE-BASED TOPOLOGY LEARNING Input: m voltage magnitudes v for all nodes, set of all edges E. Output: Operational edge set ET . 1: 8ðabÞ2E, compute ϕab ¼½ðva�μvaÞ�ðvb�μvbÞ�
2
2: Find minimum weight spanning tree from E with ϕab as edge weights. 3: ET edges in spanning tree
2715 Topology Learning With Missing Data
Algorithm Complexity Using Kruskal’s algorithm [24, 25], the minimum spanning tree from E edges can be computed in OðjEjlogjEjÞ operations. If E is not known, we consider a complete graph where all edges are permissible. Algorithm 1’s complexity in that case is OðN2 logNÞ.
Extension to Multiple Trees Note that each tree has a reference bus with reference voltage known. The voltage magnitudes at nodes a and b belonging to disjoint trees will be uncor-
related and ϕab ¼Ωv(a, a) +Ωv(b, b). This result can be used to separate nodes into disjoint subsets before running Algorithm 1 to generate each operational tree. The same technique can be used to extend algorithms in later sections to
the case with multiple trees.
In the next section, we use our spanning tree-based algorithm to consider two
cases with missing nodes.
5 TOPOLOGY LEARNING WITH MISSING DATA
In a realistic power grid, communication packet drops or random noise events
may erase voltage magnitude measurements for a missing node setM inT . We consider two cases of missing nodes, one with missing nodes separated by greater than two hops in the operational tree and the other where all nodes
other than the terminal nodes/leaves are missing. We assume that the observer
estimates or has access to historical information for the values of Ωp, Ωq, and Ωpq covariance matrices for all nodal injections and impedances R, X of all lines in
permissible edge set E. We consider the first case now.
272 CHAPTER 12: Topology Learning in Radial Distribution Grids
5.1 Missing Nodes Separated by Three or More Hops
The setting here is highlighted in the following assumption.
Assumption 2. Missing nodes M are separated by greater than two hops in the grid tree T .
Note that under Assumption 2, an observable node cannot be connected to two
or more unobserved nodes.
To reconstruct the operational topology with missing nodes, we first construct
the minimum weight spanning tree T M between observable nodes using ϕ as edge weights. Note that edges between neighbors in T also appear in T M but not vice versa. We then analyze edges in tree T M and detect unobserved node locations. First, consider the case where the missing node is a leaf node l (see
Fig. 3A). By Assumption 2, information from its parent (q) and grandparent (w) are observed. Note that ϕqw satisfies Statement 1 in Theorem 2. If all other descendants of q are known, statement 1 of the theorem can be used to identify
the existence of unobserved node l by checking for equality.
We now discuss the identification of a nonleaf missing node b (see Fig. 3A). b’s
parent a and children node setC¼fc1,c2,c3,c4gcomprise its one-hop neighbor- hood in operational tree T , and are observable under Assumption 2. Using statements 1 and 3 in Theorem 1, it is clear that descendants of b (set C) are connected to the rest of T M through node a. However, edges in T M between nodes inCand a can exist in either of the configurations shown in Fig. 3B and C. In either configuration, a parent-child pair inT M may represent a grandparent- child pair or even sibling pair in the true grid T . To identify the existence of the missing node, we use Theorem 2 on either configuration.
a
b
w q
l
c1
(A) c2 c3 c4
a
w
q
c1
(B)
c2
c* = c3
c4
a
w
q
c1
(C)
c2
c* = c3 c4
FIG. 3
(A) Distribution grid tree T with unobserved leaf node l nonleaf unobserved node b. Node a is b’s parent while nodes c1, c2, c3, c4 are its children. The spanning tree T M of observed nodes exists in either (B) configuration A or (C) configuration B.
2735 Topology Learning With Missing Data
Algorithm 2. Given missing set M, VT �M is the observed set. Algorithm 2, first, constructs spanning tree T M for observed nodes using edge weights given by ϕ. Observed nodes in T M are then arranged in decreasing depth from root node to check the location of missing nodes. For each leaf b with parent a, Steps
5 to 10 checks if edge ðabÞ2ET with or without some unobserved leaf node h connected to b. C denotes the set of undecided children of node a. Step 13 deter-
mines if nodes in C are connected to grandparent node a via a missing node h
using Statement 2 in Theorem 2, while Step 16 checks if nodes in C and node a are siblings with a common missing node as parent using Statement 3 in
Theorem 2. In each iteration, nodes (both missing and observed) are removed
from tree T M or missing set M if their parents are identified, and discovered edges are added to ET . This process is iterated by picking a new node a with all children as leaf nodes until no missing nodes remain to be discovered.
Complexity For an N node system with M set of missing nodes, Deka et al. [18] prove that the overall complexity of Algorithm 2 is OððN�jMjÞ2 logðN�jMjÞ+ ðN�jMjÞjMjÞ, which is OðN2 logNÞ in the worst case. Note that this is also the worst-case complexity of Algorithm 1.
ALGORITHM 2 MINIMUM WEIGHT SPANNING TREE-BASED TOPOLOGY LEARNING WITH MISSING DATA Input: Injection covariances Ωp, Ωq, Ωpq of all nodes, missing nodes setM, m voltage observations v for nodes inVT �M, set of all edges T with line impedances. Output: Operational edge set ET . 1: 8 observable nodes a, b, compute ϕab and find minimum weight spanning tree T M with ϕab as edge weights. Sort nodes in T M in reserve topological order.
2: while jMj> 0 do 3: Select node a with children set C in T M consisting only of leaf nodes 4: for all b2C do 5: if ϕab satisfies Statement 1 in Theorem 2 with D
b T ¼fbg then
6: ET ET [fðabÞg, C C�fbg, add injection covariance of b to a. Remove node b from T M. 7: end if
8: if 9h2M s.t. ϕab satisfies Statement 1 in Theorem 2 with DbT ¼fb,hg then 9: ET ET [fðabÞ,ðbhÞg, M M�fhg, C C�fbg, T M T M�fbg. Add injection covariances of b, h to a. 10: end if
11: end for
12: if jCj> 0 then 13: if 9c2C,h2M s.t. ϕab satisfies Statement 2 in Theorem 2 with DcT ¼ cf g and D
h T ¼fhg[C then
14: ET ET [fðahÞg[fðchÞ8c2Cg, M M�fhg. Add injection covariances 8c2C, h to a, TM T M�C 15: else
16: Pick b2C. Find h2M s.t. ϕab satisfies Statement 3 in Theorem 2 with h as parent and DbT ¼fbg, D a T ¼fag.
17: ET ET [fðahÞg[fðchÞ8c2Cg. Add injection covariances of a, 8c2C to h, T M T M�fag[C. 18: end if
19: end if
20: end while
274 CHAPTER 12: Topology Learning in Radial Distribution Grids
Note Empirically computed second moments of voltages may differ from their true
values. Hence we use tolerances to check the correctness all equality relations. Similar tolerances are used in the next section as well.
5.2 All Nonleaf Nodes Are Missing
We now consider the case where all observed nodes are limited to terminal
nodes or leaves. Thus, all intermediate nodes that are neighbors are missing.
As before, we assume knowledge of line parameters at all permissible lines in set E. However, in this setting, we assume injection statistics to be available only at the terminal nodes (not at missing nodes). Further we assume the fol-
lowing structural constraint.
Assumption 3. All missing intermediate nodes are assumed to have a degree
greater than two.
This assumption is necessary as without it, the solution to the topology learning
problem may not be unique for any learning algorithm. An example for this is
given in [19]. Similar assumptions for uniqueness in learning general graphical models are mentioned in [26]. Note that under Assumption 3, the sibling of a
leaf node may be another leaf node or a missing intermediate node.
To learn the topology given only measurements at leaf nodes, we present Algorithm 3. The topology learning is done in three major steps:
(a) identifying parent of sibling leaves, (b) building path from siblings to
the root iteratively, and (c) identifying location of leaves with no leaf siblings. As the injection covariances at terminal nodes are known, Statement 4 in
Theorem 2 shows that ϕab for two sibling nodes depends on the impedances on the lines to their parent. We use this to determine the parent of all leaf pairs
that are siblings. Theorem 3 shows that for a leaf node c and two sibling leaves a
and b, ϕac�ϕbc depend on the impedances of edges in the paths from a and b to the root. This result can thus be used iteratively to identify missing nodes on the
path from a and b to the root. Finally the location of leaves that do not have
other leaves as siblings is determined through Theorem 3. The correct location is ensured by checking at all candidate nodes before checking at their parents.
See Deka et al. [19] for a detailed explanation.
Computational Complexity As detailed in [19], the overall complexity of the algorithm is O(N3) in the worst
case. Further it can be shown that for specific configurations, Algorithm 3 can
learn the grid with phase measurements limited to only 50% of the grid nodes, which is the lower limit for exact reconstruction for any algorithm.
ALGORITHM 3 TOPOLOGY LEARNING USING TERMINAL NODE DATA Input: Injection covariances Ωp, Ωq, Ωpq at terminal nodesL, missing node setM¼VT �L, m voltage magnitude observations v for nodes in L, set of all edges E with line impedances. Output: Operational edge set ET . 1: 8 nodes a,c2L, compute ϕac. 8a2VT , define para Φ, desa Φ 2: for all a,c2L do 3: if b2M s.t. ϕac, b satisfy Statement 3 in Theorem 2 then 4: ET ET [fðabÞ,ðbcÞg, para, parc b, desb a, c, tp 1 5: end if
6: end for
7: while tp > 0 do
8: tp 0 9: for all k2M with some a, b 2 desk, park ¼ Φ do 10: if k2 2M, c2L, s.t. ϕac � ϕbc satisfy Theorem 3 then 11: ET ET [fðkk2Þg,park k2,desk2 desk,tp 1 12: end if
13: end for
14: end while
15: If one missing nodehas unidentifiedparent,join it toroot. Formpostordertraversal setW for missing nodes withknownparents 16: for all c2L,parc ¼Φ do 17: for j 1 to jWj do 18: k2 WðjÞ with a,b2desk2 19: if ϕac � ϕbc satisfy Eq. (12) then 20: ET ET [fðck2Þg,W W�fk2g, j jWj 21: end if
22: end for
23: end for
2756 Experiments
6 EXPERIMENTS
In this section, we present simulation results that highlight the performance of
our three learning algorithms. First, we consider Algorithm 1 that learns the operational edge set ET using voltage magnitude measurements at all nodes. We consider a radial network [27, 28] with 29 load nodes and 1 substation
as shown in Fig. 4A. In each of our simulation runs, we first collect complex
(A) (B)
FIG. 4
Layouts of the grids tested. The large circle represents substation (marked as S). The smaller circles represent numbered load nodes.
Black lines represent operational edges. Some of the additional open lines are represented by dotted lines. (A) Twenty-nine-bus system for
Algorithm 2. (B) Twenty-bus system for Algorithm 3.
Number of voltage measurements 0 50 100 150 200
A ve
ra g e r
e la
tiv e e
rr o r
in t o p o lo
g y
le a rn
in g
× 10–4
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
(A) Number of voltage measurements
200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
A ve
ra g e r
e la
tiv e e
rr o r
in t o p o lo
g y
le a rn
in g
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4
0.45
4 missing nodes 6 missing nodes 8 missing nodes
(B)
0.5
(C)
1 1.5 2 2.5 3
× 104
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4
0.45
Number of voltage measurements
A ve
ra g e r
e la
tiv e e
rr o r
in t o p o lo
g y
le a rn
in g
t1 = 3.8 × 10 −2, t2 = 2 × 10
−1
t1 = 3.5 × 10 −2, t2 = 2 × 10
−1
t1 = 3.5 × 10 −2, t2 = 1.5 × 10
−1
t1 = 3.2 × 10 −2, t2 = 1.5 × 10
−1
t1 = 3 × 10 −2, t2 = 1 × 10
−1
FIG. 5
Average fractional errors in learning operational edges versus number of samples used. (A) Algorithm 1, (B) Algorithm 2 with 4, 6, and 8 missing nodes, and
(C) Algorithm 3 with data at terminal nodes.
2 7 6
C H A P T E R
1 2 :
T o p o lo g y L e a r n in g in
R a d ia l D is tr ib u tio
n G r id s
2777 Conclusions
power injection samples at the nonsubstation nodes from a uncorrelated mul-
tivariate Gaussian distribution that is uncorrelated between different nodes and
generate voltage magnitude samples from the LC-PF model. We also introduce 30 additional edges (at random) forming the loopy edge set E. The results for topology learning for this case are presented in Fig. 5A. Note that the estimation is extremely accurate and average errors expressed relative to the size of the
operational edge set decay to zero at sample sizes less than 50.
Next we present simulations for Algorithm 2 where the operational grid struc- ture is reconstructed in the presence of unobserved nodes separated by three or
more hops. We consider three cases with four, six, and eight missing nodes. The
locations of the unobserved nodes are selected at random in accordance with Assumption 2. The average number of errors shown in Fig. 5B decreases with an
increase in the number of samples for all the cases considered. This tendency is
seen clearly for all the cases of the unobserved node sets. Further, the average errors increase with increase in the number of unobserved nodes for a fixed
number of measurement samples.
Finally we present results for Algorithm 3 that learns the topology with voltage
measurements only at terminal nodes. For that we consider a 20-bus radial grid
satisfying Assumption 3 depicted in Fig. 4B. As before we introduce 30 addi- tional edges (at random) to construct the loopy edge set E. In Fig. 5C, we plot the average fractional errors in Algorithm 3 that decrease steadily with increase
in the number of voltage magnitude measurements used for the different values of tolerances considered. The values of tolerance to achieve the most accurate
results are selected manually.
7 CONCLUSIONS
This chapter highlights different schemes to estimate the operational radial topology of distribution grids from a dense underlying loopy graph using sta-
tistics of voltage magnitudes. For the case where voltage magnitudes are avail-
able at all nodes, we show that if the variance of voltage differences is used as edge weights in the underlying graph, the operational grid is given by the min-
imum weight spanning tree. In fact, no additional information is necessary for
the algorithm to operate. We also show two extensions of our learning frame- work to cases where available voltage measurements are limited to a subset of
the grid nodes. For unobserved nodes separated by greater than three hops, we show that exact reconstruction is possible by verifying equality relations satis-
fied by the edge weights. Similarly, such equality relations enable the exact
reconstruction when all voltage measurements are limited to the leaf nodes and all intermediate nodes are missing. Future directions of using voltage
moment-based learning include relaxation of the assumptions used, for
278 CHAPTER 12: Topology Learning in Radial Distribution Grids
example, allowing unobserved nodes to be separated by less than three hops
and without available historical injection statistics. Further inclusion of lossy PF models and analysis of effect of measurement noise will extend the practical
usefulness of the learning algorithms proposed.
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- Topology Learning in Radial Distribution Grids
- Introduction
- Prior Work
- Technical Contribution
- Distribution Grid: Structure and Power Flows
- Radial Structure
- PF Model
- Properties of Voltage Magnitudes in Radial Grids
- Topology Learning With Full Observation
- Algorithm Complexity
- Extension to Multiple Trees
- Topology Learning With Missing Data
- Missing Nodes Separated by Three or More Hops
- Complexity
- Note
- All Nonleaf Nodes Are Missing
- Computational Complexity
- Experiments
- Conclusions
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-13---Grid-Topology-Identification-via-Dist_2018_Big-Data-Application.pdf
CHAPTER 13
Grid Topology Identification via Distributed Statistical Hypothesis Testing
Saverio Bolognani Automatic Control Laboratory ETH Z€urich, Z€urich, Switzerland
281
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
We consider the problem of automatically identifying the topology of a power distribution network,
based on data measurements collected on the grid. Possible applications include the detection of changes in the operational topology, the deployment and tuning of plug-and-play volt-VAR regu-
lators, and the implementation of active management strategies for congestion relief.
We first show, by using a first-order model of the grid, that voltage measurements exhibit some
specific correlation properties, that can be described via a sparse Markov random field. By special- izing the tools available for the identification of graphical models, we propose a centralized algo-
rithm for the reconstruction of the grid topology.
We then show how it is possible to formulate the grid topology identification task as a series of distributed statistical tests that agents need to perform on their measurements. As the number of
collected samples increases, agents can answer the test with increasing confidence, select the correct
hypothesis (e.g., a switch being open or close), and ultimately infer the grid topology. The compu-
tational complexity of each of these tests is independent from the grid size. The effectiveness of both the centralized and the distributed approach is tested in simulations,
based on household power demand measurements from a real distribution feeder.
1 INTRODUCTION
Power distribution networks, compared to transmission systems, have been
historically planned and designed according to a fit-and-forget approach. Dur-
ing operation, these grids remain mostly unmonitored, with minimal sensing and actuation, and often no communication infrastructure available to collect
measurements or dispatch real-time commands.
Different challenges are now emerging in the power distribution networks, and
are motivating a much deeper integration of information, communication, and
control technology in this realm. One example is the large-scale penetration of microgenerators from fluctuating energy sources. Distributed power genera-
tion, especially inside the highly resistive, radial, low voltage networks, can
cause local overvoltage and power line congestion issues [1]. Another example is the connection of dispatchable loads to the power distribution network
(e.g., plugin electric vehicles and smart buildings). Today’s power distribution
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00013-9
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
282 CHAPTER 13: Grid Topology Identification via Distributed Statistical Hypothesis Testing
grids will face major congestion issues if proper scheduling and coordination
protocols will not be enforced to these consumers [2, 3].
In the last few years, international research projects have been funded in order
to develop and engineer solutions to these challenges, while maintaining grid efficiency and reliability [4–7]. Many of these solutions require that the topol- ogy of the power distribution grid is known, which is not always true. In many
cases, the deployment of intelligence in the power distribution grid will consist of retro-fitting an existing infrastructure via the installation of new devices.
A plug-and-play approach is often considered and may constitute in some cases
the only viable solution. According to this approach, the devices must identify the physical system in which they operate, starting from the topology of the
grid, and reconfigure the communication and control infrastructure in order
to being able to perform the assigned tasks. Even after deployment, the topol- ogy of the grid may be subject to changes, via the operation of dedicated
switches to achieve higher efficiency or better quality of the service. Such
changes of topology need to be detected by the controllers in the grid, which in turn need to be promptly reconfigured.
Inthischapter,weconsidertheproblemofidentifyingthegridtopologyfromfield measurements that can be performed in the grid, and in particular from voltage
magnitude measurements at the buses. The approach proposed in this paper is
closely related to the methods for the identification of Markov random fields (graphical models) [8], and is based on some conditional correlation properties
that characterize voltage measurements in a radial grid. These properties are
reported in Section 3, where they are also used to derive a centralized topology identification algorithm. In Section 4, we show how the same reasoning can be
used to design distributed tests that involve only three nodes, and return elemen-
tarybitsofinformationregardingthetopologyofthegrid.Thesetestsrequiremin- imal sensing and computational resources, and return a reliable response after an
extremely limited number of measurement samples. Both the correlation analysis
andthedistributedidentificationalgorithmsaretestedinSection5onpowermea- surements data obtained from a real distribution network.
1.1 Related Works
The literature on grid topology identification is mostly divided into two areas:
works that consider the problem of determining the position of a limited num-
ber of grid switches, and therefore test a limited number of hypotheses, and works that aim at identifying the entire topology of a feeder. We review these
two areas separately in the next two paragraphs.
The idea of using field measurements to detection of unmonitored switching of circuit breakers in the reconfiguration of the power distribution grid has been
presented for example in [9], where the task has been formulated as a
2832 Power Distribution Grid Model
classification problem. More recently, correlation analysis methods have been
proposed to verify whether the topology available in a geographic information system is correct [10], tackling the problem as a hypothesis testing problem. An
algorithm for real-time detection of topology changes, based on PMU measure-
ments and on the identification of patterns in the time series following a switch- ing event, has been proposed in [11]. The Markov random field nature of
voltage phasor measurements has been recognized in [12], and used as a test
for fault detection.
Algorithm like the one proposed in [13], on the other hand, aim at reconstruct-
ing the entire topology, without assuming any specific library of possible con- figurations. The mathematical analysis presented in this chapter is adopted
(and extended) from there. More recently, the same idea of constructing a
minimum-cost spanning tree for the identification of the power distribution network, which is closely related to the Chow-Liu algorithm for graphical
models, has been used in [14] on the mutual information matrix, yielding bet-
ter performance but still requiring very large number of samples. Topology learning tools based on the trends in second-order moments of voltage mea-
surements have been proposed in [15, 16]. Interestingly, the same authors also
considered the case in which some measurements are missing, a challenging problem in graphical learning [17]. In [18], the bus connectivity and topology
estimation problems are formulated as a linear regression problem with least
absolute shrinkage on grouped variables (Group Lasso).
In all these works synthetic data are used rather than real measurements.
A notable exception is [19], where, however, linear voltage sensitivity coeffi- cients are computed, without enforcing sparsity or tree structure.
2 POWER DISTRIBUTION GRID MODEL
We model a power distribution grid as a radial graph G, in which edges repre- sent the power lines, and nodes V ¼ f0,…,ng represent the buses of the grid (including the substation, indexed as 0).
We limit the study to a grid-connected distribution feeder, and we therefore
assume that the voltage at node 0 is constant (i.e., it does not depend on the
power demands in the feeder) and that all other nodes h 2 L :¼ f1,…,ng can be modeled as PQ buses (i.e., with an active and reactive power demand
that does not depend on the bus voltage).
In this framework, the steady state of the grid is described by the following
nodal quantities, for each node h 2 V:
• complex voltage uh ¼ vhejφh • complex power injection sh ¼ ph + jqh • complex current injection ih
284 CHAPTER 13: Grid Topology Identification via Distributed Statistical Hypothesis Testing
Based on this notation, we write the nonlinear power flow equations of the grid
as n + 1 complex-valued equations of the form
vhe jφh
X k2V
yhkvke �jφk ¼ ph + jqh, 8h 2 V (1)
where yhk is the complex conjugate of the admittance of the line connecting h to
k, and yhh ¼ � P
k 6¼hyhk (assuming negligible shunt admittances at the buses).
For the subsequent analysis, it is convenient to introduce the following vecto-
rial notation. We denote by v, s, p, q the vectors of dimension n, obtained by stacking the scalar quantities vh, sh, ph, qh, respectively, for all h 2 L. Similarly, we partition the bus admittance matrix Y, whose elements are the scalars yhk, as
Y ¼ Y00 Y0L YL0 YLL
� �
where YLL has dimensions n � n.
For the subsequent analysis, we consider the linearization of the nonlinear
power flow equations (1) around the flat voltage profile (vh ¼ v0, 8h 2 V), cor- responding to the linear coupled power flow model. We refer to [20, Section V] for
the derivation of the model, and to [21] for a geometric interpretation of this
linearization. Based on this approximation, voltage magnitudes at the buses in L can be expressed as
v � 1v0 + 1
v0 ReðZsÞ (2)
where the bus impedance matrix Z 2 n�n is defined as Z ¼ Y�1LL.
We recall that the elements of the bus impedance matrix have the following
well-known interpretation in the case of radial networks.
Definition 1 (Shortest Electric Path). Given two buses h,k 2 V, we define the electric path Phk as the smallest connected subset of nodes of V such that h,k 2 Phk.
Lemma 1. Let h, k be two buses in V, and let P0h and P0k be the shortest electric paths that connect them to node 0. Then Zhk is the sum of the impedances of the
edges connecting the nodes in the intersection P0h \P0k. Without loss of generality, in the following, we assume v0 ¼ 1. We also consider the approximation error in Eq. (2) negligible, and therefore adopt the grid
model
v ¼ 1 + Rp + Xq (3)
where R ¼ Re(Z) and X ¼ Im(Z) are the reduced bus resistance and reactance matrices, respectively.
2853 Voltage Correlation Analysis
3 VOLTAGE CORRELATION ANALYSIS
In this section, we review and extend the voltage correlation analysis proposed
for the first time in [13], as it lays the groundwork for the derivation of the pro- posed distributed identification strategy.
Based on Eq. (3), the covariance matrix of the bus voltages can be directly
expressed as
covðvÞ ¼ v�vð Þ v�vð ÞT
¼ Rðp�pÞ + Xðq�qÞð Þ Rðp�pÞ + Xðq�qÞð ÞT
¼ RΣppR + XΣqpR + RΣpqX + XΣqqX
(4)
where
Σpp Σpq Σqp Σqq
� �
is the positive definite covariance matrix of the bus power injection vector [pTqT]T.
The covariance matrix (4) clearly contains information regarding the topology
of the grid, which is encoded in the matrices R and X. For this information to be reconstructable, we need the following assumption.
Assumption 1 (Uncorrelated Power Demands). Active and reactive power injections at different buses are mutually uncorrelated. Therefore Σpp, Σpq, Σqp, and Σqq are all diagonal matrices. Assumption 1 is a critical step in the derivation of correlation-based topology identification methods, and has been adopted throughout the literature
reviewed in Section 1. In Section 5 we verify whether this assumption holds
on the power measurements from a real distribution feeder, and we discuss how it depends on the time scale under consideration.
We then introduce two other assumptions that will be later employed in the analysis.
Assumption 2 (Uniform X/R Ratio). All power lines in the distribution grid
have the same inductance/resistance ratio, that is
yhk ¼ ejθjyhkj, 8h,k 2 V
where θ is fixed across the network. Assumption 2 is satisfied when the grid is relatively homogeneous, and is rea- sonable in most practical cases, including the IEEE test feeder considered in the
numerical experiments of Section 5.
286 CHAPTER 13: Grid Topology Identification via Distributed Statistical Hypothesis Testing
Assumption 3 (Uniform Power Factor). All loads in the distribution feeder
have the same power factor, that is
qh ¼ κph, 8h 2 L
where κ is fixed across the network. Notice that Assumption 3 is trivially verified if the loads are perfectly compen-
sated, in which case κ ¼ 0 and thus qh ¼ 0 for all h 2 L.
We can therefore state the following result, which shows how it is possible to compute the voltage covariance matrix a completely equivalent purely
resistive grid.
Lemma 2 (Equivalent Resistive Grid). Let Assumption 1 hold, together with either
Assumption 2 or 3. Then there exists a purely resistive network, with the same topology
of G, bus conductance matrix G, and uncorrelated active power injections with covari- ance matrix Σ, which yields the same voltage covariance matrix cov(v) as the original grid.
Moreover, the voltage covariance matrix can be explicitly expressed as
covðvÞ ¼ MΣM
where M ¼ G�1LL.
Proof. Let us first consider the case in which Assumption 2 holds. Then Y ¼ ejθY0, where Y
0 2 ðn + 1Þ�ðn + 1Þ. It follows that R ¼ Re Y�1LL � �
¼ cosθ Y0LL � ��1
and X ¼ Im Y�1LL
� � ¼ �sinθ Y0LL
� ��1 . Therefore X ¼ �tanθR, and expression (4)
can be rewritten as
covðvÞ ¼ R Σpp �2tanθΣqp + tan2θΣqq � �
R
The statement of the lemma is therefore verified by defining the positive defi-
nite matrix
Σ ¼ Σpp �2tanθΣqp + tan2θΣqq ¼ I �tanθI½ � Σpp Σpq Σqp Σqq
� � I
�tanθI
� �
and by considering the graph Laplacian G ¼ Re(Y).
Let us now consider the case in which Assumption 3 holds. Then Σpq ¼Σqp ¼ κΣpp and Σqq ¼ κ2Σpp. Expression (4) can be manipulated to obtain
covðvÞ ¼ ðR + κXÞΣppðR + κXÞ
The statement of the lemma is therefore verified by taking Σ ¼Σpp (which is pos- itive definite) and by considering the graph Laplacian G obtained by weighting
each edge hk as Re(yhk) � κIm(yhk), where yhk is the admittance of the corre- sponding power line. □
2873 Voltage Correlation Analysis
Lemma 2 is instrumental to prove the following result, which shows how the
inverse of the covariance matrix cov(v) is sparse and has a specific sign pattern.
Theorem 1. Let Assumption 1 hold, together with either Assumption 2 or 3. Let K ¼ cov(v)�1. Then for any pair h, k in L we have that
Khk
> 0 if h ¼ k < 0 if h � k > 0 if 9‘ 2 L such that h � ‘ and ‘ � k 0 otherwise
8>>< >>:
where the � sign indicates neighbors in the electric topology (i.e., there exists an edge of the graph connecting them).
Proof. Based on Lemma 2, the matrix K can be explicitly expressed as
K ¼ covðvÞ�1 ¼ ðMΣMÞ�1 ¼ GLLΣ�1GLL
for some positively weighted Laplacian L and some positive definite diagonal
matrix Σ�1. We introduce the notation
Σ{ ¼ 0 0 0 Σ�1
� � 2 ðn + 1Þ�ðn + 1Þ
By defining N ðhÞ as the set of neighbors of node h, and by using the fact that G is a positively weighted Laplacian and therefore
Ghk
> 0 if h ¼ k < 0 if h � k 0 otherwise
8< :
we have that
1ThGΣ {G1k ¼ Ghh1Th +
X h 0 2N ðhÞ
Ghh0 1h0
0 @
1 AΣ{ 1kGkk +
X k 0 2N ðkÞ
1k0 Gk0 k
0 @
1 A
Now, using the fact that
1Tv Σ {1w ¼
Σvvð Þ�1 > 0 if v ¼ w 6¼ 0 0 otherwise
�
we have that, in L,
• for all h,
Khh ¼ 1ThGΣ {G1h ¼ Ghh Σhhð Þ�1Ghh +
X ‘2N ðhÞ
Gh‘ Σ‘‘ð Þ�1G‘h > 0;
288 CHAPTER 13: Grid Topology Identification via Distributed Statistical Hypothesis Testing
if h � k then
•
Khk ¼ 1ThGΣ {G1k ¼ Ghh Σhhð Þ�1Ghk + Ghk Σkkð Þ�1Gkk < 0;
• if h 6¼k and 9‘ such that ‘ � h and ‘ � k, then
Khk ¼ 1ThGΣ {G1k ¼ Gh‘ Σ‘‘ð Þ�1G‘k > 0;
• Khk ¼ 1ThGΣ {G1k ¼ 0 otherwise. □
Remark 1. The matrix K is known as concentration matrix, and has an interesting and well-known interpretation in terms of conditional correlation. In particu-
lar, Khk ¼ 0 if and only if vh and vk are conditionally uncorrelated given all other voltages v‘, ‘6¼h, k. According to Theorem 1, the sparsity pattern of K is the same of Y2LL. In the terminology of Markov random fields [8], this means that the corresponding graphical model is an undirected graph in which nodes are
connected by an edge (and therefore are conditionally correlated) if they are 1-hop or 2-hop neighbors in the graph describing the power distribution grid
topology.
Theorem 1 also shows that the strictly negative elements of K have the sparsity pattern of YLL and can therefore be directly used to reconstruct the electrical topology of the grid.
Based on these observations, we propose the following steps for the identifica-
tion of the grid topology, given a sequence of T voltage measurements at all
buses of the grid, v(t), t ¼ 1, …, T.
1. Compute the sample covariance matrix Σ̂ ¼ covðvðtÞ,t ¼ 1,…,TÞ. 2. Compute the sample concentration matrix K̂ as Σ̂�1. 3. Consider the complete graph C defined on the nodes L, with edge weights
corresponding to the elements of K̂. Compute the minimum spanning tree on C, that is, the subgraph of C that is a tree, connects all the nodes, and whose total edge cost is less than or equal to any other spanning tree.
Notice that the minimum spanning tree can be computed in polynomial time
by greedy algorithms like the Prim’s algorithm [22].
The proposed algorithm resembles, in some sense, the well-known Chow-Liu
algorithm [23] for graphical model identification, in which, however, the
choice of the best spanning tree is motivated by the search for the closest approximation of the actual distribution in an information-theoretic sense.
In our scenario, on the other hand, we know in advance that there exists a tree
which is the root (in the graph-theory sense) of the graph that describes the actual distribution (i.e., the actual graph connects nodes that can be reached
in one or two hops in such tree), and we make explicit use of this additional
2894 A Distributed Topology Test
information. Because of this a priori knowledge, we also do not need the tools
that have been developed for model selection [24] (i.e., to tune the sparsity of the estimated graph).
In Section 5 we illustrate the voltage correlation analysis presented in this sec- tion, by considering a dataset of real power demand measurements and by
implementing the proposed identification algorithm. We show how this algo-
rithm typically requires a large number of samples, and how its performance deteriorates when the assumptions are not verified.
4 A DISTRIBUTED TOPOLOGY TEST
As reviewed in Section 1, different approaches based on similar statistical anal-
ysis of voltage measurements have been proposed, improving the topology
detection rate and in some cases reducing the number of samples needed [14–16]. These works, however, consider the same centralized scenario intro- duced in Section 3. Voltages at all nodes are supposed to be measured (with
the possible exception of few nodes, as suggested in [17]), making the imple- mentation of these schemes impractical in poorly monitored networks.
In this section, the same correlation-based approach will be employed to derive
a set of distributed topology tests, where small clusters of three buses will have to communicate and share their voltage measurements in order to provide ele-
mentary bits of information regarding the topology of the grid. This approach
better suits the typical needs of distribution network operators: it requires a minimal amount of sensing (three bus voltage sensors) and it allows to discern
simple (but relevant) hypotheses on the grid topology, such as
• whether a switch is open or closed;
• which of the three sensor lies closest to the substation, in an electrical
sense; and • what is the relative position of a newly connected sensor with respect to
other sensors.
In order to present the details of this approach, we introduce the follo-
wing definitions, which are also illustrated in Fig. 1 and apply only to radial
graphs.
Definition 2 (Triad). A set of three buses T � L is a triad, if one of the three buses belongs to the shortest electric path that connects the other two.
Definition 3 (Minimal Interleaved Graph). A graph is a minimal interleaved
graph connecting a triad T if it is obtained by interleaving T with another triad T
0 ¼ f0,v,wg, as shown in Fig. 1.
k ′
0 h k l
0 h kv w l
(A)
(B)
FIG. 1
Schematic representation of the definitions introduces in Section 4. (A) The subset of buses T ¼ fh,k,‘g is a triad because k belongs to the shortest-electric pathPh‘ (the thick-dashed path). The subset {h, k0, ‘} is not a triad. (B) The minimal interleaved graph that connects the triad T .
290 CHAPTER 13: Grid Topology Identification via Distributed Statistical Hypothesis Testing
Definition 4 (Node Depth). Given a bus h 2 V, and a weighted Laplacian G, we define the node depth xh as the sum of the weights of the edges that connect
the nodes in the shortest electric path P0h. Based on these definitions, we can state the following result, which shows that
the voltage covariance at the buses of a triad is identical to the voltage covari-
ance of a triad in a much smaller purely resistive grid, with properly chosen line parameters and active power injection covariance.
Lemma 3 (Minimal Equivalent Resistive Grid). Let Assumption 1 hold, together with either Assumption 2 or 3. Consider a triad T ¼ fh,k,‘g. Then there exists a min- imal equivalent resistive grid, whose graph is a minimal interleaved graph connecting
T , with conductance matrix G �
and diagonal power covariance Σ � , which yields the
same covariance covðvT Þ of the voltages at the nodes h, k, ‘.
Proof. The proof is constructive, and follows these steps, which are also shown
in Fig. 2.
• Based on Lemma 2, we consider the equivalent resistive grid with
positively weighted Laplacian G and power covariance Σ (Step (A)). • Without loss of generality, we lump all the power demands in each lateral
(i.e., branches that do not belong to the path P0‘) to the node where the lateral connects (Step (B)).
• We denote by L1, L2, and L3, the three subsets of nodes indicated in Step (B).
• We consider the minimal interleaved graph in Step (C), with positively weighted Laplacian G
� such that nodes h, k, ‘ have the same
depths xh, xk, x‘ as in the original graph with Laplacian G, while nodes v
and w have depths
0
0
h k l
h k
h k l0
x1 xh x2 xl x3 xk
xh xv xl xw xk
(A)
(B)
(C)
L1 L2 L3 l
FIG. 2
Schematic representation of the steps of the constructive proof of Lemma 3.
2914 A Distributed Topology Test
xv ¼
X i2L2
xiσiðxi �xhÞX i2L2
σiðxi �xhÞ
xw ¼
X i2L3
xiσiðxi �xkÞX i2L3
σiðxi �xkÞ
where σi is the diagonal element of Σ corresponding to node i. • We construct the diagonal power covariance matrix Σ
� with diagonal
elements
σ � v ¼
X i2L2
σiðxi �xhÞ
xv �xh
σ � w ¼
X i2L3
σiðxi �xkÞ
xw �xk
σ � h ¼ σh +
X i2L1
x2i σi
x2 h
+ X i2L2
σi �σ � v
σ � k ¼ σk +
X i2L3
σi �σ � w
σ � ‘ ¼ σ‘
The voltage covariance matrix for the minimal equivalent resistive grid can be
computed as M � Σ � M � . Using the fact that, for line graphs, Mij ¼ minfxi,xkg
(which follows directly from Lemma 1), via lengthy but otherwise standard
computations, it is possible to show that the covariance of the triad voltages
vT is the same in the original equivalent resistive grid and in the minimal
292 CHAPTER 13: Grid Topology Identification via Distributed Statistical Hypothesis Testing
equivalent resistive grid. Via Lemma 2, the same covariance matrix is also equal
to the voltage covariance covðvT Þ in the original grid. □
The purpose of the equivalence introduced by Lemma 3 is to allow a much sim-
pler study of the voltage covariance matrix covðvT Þ. In fact, for a minimal inter- leaved graph, it is possible to explicitly write covðvT Þ as a function of the parameters G
� and Σ
� . This fact is used to obtain the following result.
Theorem 2. Let Assumption 1 hold, together with either Assumption 2 or 3.
Consider a triad T ¼ fh,k,‘g, in which k 2 Ph‘, and let covðvT Þ be the covariance of the voltages at the buses h, k, ‘. Then the matrix K ¼ ½covðvT Þ��1 has sign pattern
signðKÞ ¼
+1 �1 +1
�1 +1 �1
+1 �1 +1
2 664
3 775
Proof. We first construct, via Lemma 2, an equivalent resistive network. Then, via Lemma 3, we consider a minimal equivalent resistive network which
is guaranteed to yield the same voltage covariance matrix at the nodes of
the triad.
The voltage covariance matrix covðvT Þ can be then obtained by selecting the rows and columns of the full voltage covariance matrix covðvÞ ¼M
� Σ � M � . Using
Lemma 1, we can write
covðvT Þ ¼ N
σ � h
σ � v
σ � k
σ � w
σ � ‘
2 66664
3 77775N
T where N ¼ x � h x
� h x
� h x
� h x
� h
x � h x
� v x
� k x
� k x
� h
x � h x
� v x
� k x
� w x
� ‘
2 664
3 775
As the determinant of K is positive, the sign pattern of K is the same sign pattern of adjointðcovðvT ÞÞ. The matrix adjointðcovðvT ÞÞ can be evaluated via standard symbolic math software. It is convenient to operate a change of variable, intro-
ducing the positive depth differences δh0 ¼ x � h, δvh ¼ x
� v � x
� h, δkv ¼ x
� k � x
� v,
δwk ¼ x � w � x
� k, and δ‘w ¼ x
� ‘ � x
� w. The elements of adjointðcovðvT ÞÞ are fourth-
order polynomials in these quantities. For example, we have that
adjointðcovðvT ÞÞ½ �‘‘ ¼ σ � h ðσ
� k + σ
� ‘ + σ
� v + σ
� wÞδ2h0δ
2 vh
+2σ � hðσ
� k + σ
� ‘ + σ
� wÞδ2h0δvhδkv + ðσ
� h + σ
� vÞðσ
� k + σ
� ‘ + σ
� wÞδ2h0δ
2 kv
We do not report them here for space reasons. The sign of all the elements of
adjointðcovðvT ÞÞ is then apparent by inspection, and the matrix K exhibits the sign pattern
2934 A Distributed Topology Test
signðKÞ ¼ +1 �1 +1 �1 +1 �1 +1 �1 +1
2 4
3 5
□
Based on Theorem 2, we can then propose the following steps as a distributed
hypothesis test. Given a triad T , and a sequence of T voltage measurements at the three buses in T , vðtÞT , t ¼ 1, …, T, this test determines which node of the triad belongs to the shortest-electric path that connects the other two nodes (in other
words, the “order” of the nodes in the triad). It consists of the following steps.
1. Compute the 3 � 3 sample covariance matrix Σ̂T ¼ covðv ðtÞ T ,t ¼ 1,…,TÞ.
2. Compute the 3 � 3 sample concentration matrix K̂ as Σ̂�1T . 3. Consider the complete graph C defined on the nodes T , with edge
weights corresponding to the elements of K̂. Compute the minimum spanning tree on C, i.e., the line subgraph of C that connects the three nodes, and whose total edge cost is less than or equal to any other
spanning tree.
The advantage of this approach is that the test has to identify the most likely
topology among only three possible topologies of the triad, resulting in a much smaller search space. For example, in the scenario represented in Fig. 3, a dis-
tribution grid operator may be interested in knowing whether switch S1 or S2 is
closed. By selecting the triad {h, k, ‘}, this binary question is cast into the form of a hypothesis test on the relative topology of the nodes in the triad: if k 2 Ph‘, then S1 must be open while S2 must be closed; on the other hand, if h 2 Pk‘, then S2 must be open, and S1 must be closed. We show in Section 5 that very few samples are needed in order to identify the correct hypothesis in similar
configurations.
h
l
k
0 S1
S2
FIG. 3
An example of how the problem of determining the position of a pair of grid switches can be cast into the
problem of determining the relative position of the nodes of a triad {h, k, ‘}.
294 CHAPTER 13: Grid Topology Identification via Distributed Statistical Hypothesis Testing
5 NUMERICAL EXPERIMENTS
In this section, we use a dataset of power demand measurements from a real
power distribution grid to validate both the correlation analysis presented in Section 3 and the distributed algorithm proposed in Section 4.
The dataset is provided as part of the DiSC simulation framework [25], and has
been obtained as anonymized data from the Danish DSO NRGi. It represents the power consumption of about 1200 individual households from the area
around the Danish city Horsens. Each profile has a temporal resolution of
15 min, and spans more than a year. In order to recreate the sub-15 min vari- ability of loads, we superimposed power demand fluctuations obtained via a
simple generative model similar to the one proposed in [26].
As a test feeder, we adopted the test feeder proposed in [20], available as an
online repository [27], and consisting in the three-phase backbone of the
standard IEEE 123 distribution test feeder [28]. At each bus of the feeder, we con- sidered an aggregation of power demand profiles proportional to the nominal
power demand of the bus. Some examples of power profiles are plotted in Fig. 4.
The entire analysis presented in this chapter, and similar approaches proposed in the literature, requires that Assumption 1 is verified, that is, that power
demands at the different buses are uncorrelated. Fig. 5 shows the covariance
matrix computed on the bus active power injections, and shows how correla- tion is in fact present. This fact was also observed in [25], and is mostly due to
the fact that different households follow similar hourly patterns, and are
exposed to the same weather conditions. On the other hand, the right panel of Fig. 5 shows that the mutual correlation vanishes at high frequencies (shorter
500 100 150 200
500 100 150 200
500 100 150 200
500 0
10
p 3 6 (
kW ) 20
0
5
p 3 5 (
kW ) 10
0
5
p 3 4 (
kW ) 10
0
2
p 3 3 (k
W ) 4
100
Time (min)
150 200
FIG. 4
Example of demand profiles for four buses of the test case. Each bus demand is obtained as the
aggregation of multiple real data measurements from individual buildings.
Power demand covariance
10 20 30 40 50
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
10–4 Filtered power demand covariance
10 20 30 40 50
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
55 0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1 10–5
FIG. 5
Sample covariance matrix obtained from a 12-h dataset of real data. The left panel represents the
covariance matrix obtained from the raw data, and exhibits relevant interbus correlation. The right
panel shows that the covariance matrix obtained after a high-pass filter has been applied (stop-band
frequency: 1 8 min
, pass-band frequency 1 0:8 min
). Above this cut-out frequency, power demands are
practically uncorrelated.
2955 Numerical Experiments
time scales). Once measurement is preprocessed through a high-pass filter, it is
therefore reasonable to assume uncorrelation. This recommendation is clearly
valid not only for the approach proposed in this chapter, but for the other sim- ilar approaches reviewed in the literature as well.
In Fig. 6, we compute the concentration matrix K in order to verify the sparsity pattern predicted in Theorem 1, and thus apply the centralized identification
Concentration matrix
10 20 30 40 50
10
20
30
40
50
–1
–0.8
–0.6
–0.4
–0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1 1011
Concentration matrix (uncorrelated demands)
10 20 30 40 50
10
20
30
40
50
–1
–0.8
–0.6
–0.4
–0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1 1011
FIG. 6
The left panel represents the sample concentration matrix obtained from the real data measurements. The
concentration matrix should exhibit the same sparsity pattern of the squared Laplacian. Spurious elements
are mainly caused by the correlation between power demands, as shown in the right panel, where the same
matrix is computed based on synthetic uncorrelated power demands, and the sparsity patter is
practically exact.
0 10 20 3
0
10
20
30
40
50
Reconstructed ad
FIG. 7
Typical results of the application
data. The left panel shows how
in the map).
296 CHAPTER 13: Grid Topology Identification via Distributed Statistical Hypothesis Testing
algorithm proposed in Section 3. The left panel shows how the concentration
matrix presents many spurious elements, due to nonlinearity, nonuniform X/R ratio of the lines, nonuniform P/Q ratio, and correlation between power
demands. Further numerical experiments confirmed that this latter cause is
predominant. The right panel, obtained by performing the same analysis, on the same test grid, but with synthetic uncorrelated power demands, shows
that the sign patter predicted in Theorem 1 emerges correctly in this case.
Interestingly, the identification algorithm proposed in Section 3, based on
the construction of a minimum spanning tree, is quite robust also in the pres-
ence of spurious elements in the sample concentration matrix. Fig. 7 shows the result of a typical execution of the algorithm (which in general depends
0 40 50
jacency matrix
56
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1112 13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23 24
25 26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45 46
47
48
49 50
51
52
53
54
55
of the approach presented in Section 3 to the modified IEEE 123 test case, with real power measurement
the true Laplacian (�) is correctly identified (+) except for two misidentified edges (highlighted also
2975 Numerical Experiments
on the specific samples that are measured). The grid topology is reconstruc-
ted almost correctly, with the exception of two edges, highlighted in the right panel.
Finally, we consider the distributed statistical hypothesis testing proposed in Section 4. We consider the triad T ¼ f6,7,10g. Fig. 8 shows the concentration matrices K, computed for increasing number of samples and different sets of
measurements. On the matrices, we overlay (as black dots) the result of the identification algorithm proposed in Section 4. With as few as 30 samples,
the sign pattern predicted by Theorem 2 emerges correctly, and allows the cor-
rect reconstruction of the relative position of the three nodes. As the number of samples increases, the concentration matrices become identical.
To illustrate the performance of this distributed approach, in Fig. 9 we consid-
ered six different triads, and for each one of them we plotted the error rate in the reconstruction of the relative position of the three nodes, for increasing number
of samples. For some triads, the error rate decreases extremely fast, and very few samples are needed in order to successfully identify the topology of the triad. In
few other cases, slightly more samples are needed.
A natural question, which we have not addressed in this chapter, is about the optimal placement of the sensors (i.e., selection of the triad) in order to
R u
n 1
R u
n 2
3 samples
R u
n 3
10 samples
Concentration matrix (nodes 6 7 10)
30 samples 100 samples 300 samples
FIG. 8
Sample concentration matrix for the voltage measurements collected at three nodes (6, 7, 10). Each
column corresponds to a different number of samples. Each row corresponds to a different dataset
(corresponding to different starting times during the day). The black dots correspond to the topology
identified via the minimum-spanning-tree algorithm. As the number of samples increases, the sample
concentration matrix converges to its true value (allowing the identification of the correct topology). For
very small sample sets, different realization can yield different results.
0 10−3
10−2
10−1
100
20 40 Samples
Nodes 4 5 6
E rr
o r
ra te
60 80 0 10−3
10−2
10−1
100
20 40 Samples
Nodes 6 7 10
E rr
o r
ra te
60 80 0 10−3
10−2
10−1
100
20 40 Samples
Nodes 42 5 8
E rr
o r
ra te
60 80
0 10−3
10−2
10−1
100
20 40 Samples
Nodes 37 17 19
E rr
o r
ra te
60 80 0 10−3
10−2
10−1
100
20 40 Samples
Nodes 27 29 31
E rr
o r
ra te
60 80 0 10−3
10−2
10−1
100
20 40 Samples
Nodes 7 17 35
E rr
o r
ra te
60 80
FIG. 9
Error rate of the proposed hypothesis-testing algorithm for the identification of the relative connection of different triads of nodes. The thick line represents the unbiased
estimate of the error rate computed on 1200 realizations. The dashed line is the 95% confidence interval computed via the Wilson score interval [29], and settles
at 0.58% when no errors are observed in the 1200 realizations.
2 9 8
C H A P T E R
1 3 :
G r id
T o p o lo g y Id e n tific
a tio
n v ia
D is tr ib u te
d S ta tis
tic a l H y p o th
e s is
T e s tin
g
299References
maximize the efficiency of the algorithm in selecting the right hypotheses
between those available (e.g., which bus voltage to measure in order to deter- mine the position of the switches in Fig. 3).
6 CONCLUSIONS
In this chapter we presented an analysis of the correlation of voltage magnitude
measurements in a radial distribution feeder, showing how, under some
assumptions, such correlation encodes information about the topology of the grid.
An immediate application of this result consists in a centralized algorithm for the identification of the topology of the grid. The applicability of this algo-
rithm, and of many other similar algorithms in the literature, is limited by
the fact that all voltage buses need to be measured, and many samples are required in order to converge to the correct topology.
In most cases, the identification of the full topology is not even needed. Most topology identification problems can be cast in the form of an hypothesis test:
which network switch is closed, which node is closer to the substation, etc. In
order to address this need, a distributed statistical test has been proposed. Based on the voltage measurements of a set of only three nodes, it is possible to con-
clude, after very few samples, on the relative position and interconnection of
these nodes. The resulting algorithm is very robust with respect to weakly cor- related power demands, and extremely lightweight to implement.
The optimal placement of these triads of sensors, given a specific topology
hypothesis to test, is an open problem with relevant practical implications.
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[6] EvolvDSO, Development of methodologies and tools for new and evolving DSO roles for effi-
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tion network with limited measurements, in: IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Tech. Conf. (ISGT), 2012.
[10] W. Luan, J. Peng, M. Maras, J. Lo, B. Harapnuk, Smart meter data analytics for distribution
network connectivity verification, IEEE Trans. Smart Grid 6 (4) (2015) 1964–1971.
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[12] M. He, J. Zhang, A dependency graph approach for fault detection and localization towards
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[14] Y. Weng, Y. Liao, R. Rajagopal, Distributed energy resources topology identification via
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[15] D. Deka, S. Backhaus, M. Chertkov, Structure learning and statistical estimation in distribution
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[16] D. Deka, S. Backhaus, M. Chertkov, Estimating distribution grid topologies: a graphical learn-
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[26] A. Pohl, J. Johnson, S. Sena, R. Broderick, J. Quiroz, High-resolution residential feeder load
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[27] S. Bolognani, Approx-PF—approximate linear solution of power flow equations in power dis-
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[28] W.H. Kersting, Radial distribution test feeders, in: IEEE Power Engineering Society Winter Meeting, vol. 2, 2001, pp. 908–912, https://doi.org/10.1109/PESW.2001.916993.
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Saddle River, NJ, 2001.
- Grid Topology Identification via Distributed Statistical Hypothesis Testing
- Introduction
- Related Works
- Power Distribution Grid Model
- Voltage Correlation Analysis
- A Distributed Topology Test
- Numerical Experiments
- Conclusions
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-14---Supervised-Learning-Based-Fault-L_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-.pdf
CHAPTER 14
Supervised Learning-Based Fault Location in Power Grids
Hanif Livani University of Nevada Reno, Reno, NV, United States
303
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
In modern societies and with the introduction of “smart power grids,” customers are more sensitive
to power outages. There are also more complex power transmission configurations to integrate renewable energy-based power generation at remote locations. Therefore, more efficient and accu-
rate methods of fault location along these complex configurations are required, which target
improving power supply restoration process, reducing the overall power outages time and costs,
and enhancing end-users satisfaction. The availability of high-resolution/high-volume data, due to the proliferation of intelligent electronic devices in smart grids, paves ground to implement more
accurate and intelligent fault location methods. This chapter presents a supervised-learning fault
location method for complex power transmission lines by using high-resolution voltage and current measurements data. The fault location methods are developed for two complex high-voltage AC
transmission systems, (1) three-terminal transmission lines, (2) hybrid transmission lines. The pre-
sented methodologies utilize discrete wavelet transform and support vector machine (SVM) as a
supervised learning algorithm where the power system operating and fault conditions are taken into account through the learning steps of the SVM classifiers.
In modern societies and with the introduction of “smart power grids,” cus-
tomers are more sensitive to power outages. There are also more complex power
transmission configurations to integrate renewable energy-based power gener- ation at remote locations. Therefore, more efficient and accurate methods of
fault location along these complex configurations are required, which target
improving power supply restoration process, reducing the overall power out- ages time and costs, and enhancing end-users satisfaction. The availability of
high-resolution/high-volume data, due to the proliferation of intelligent elec-
tronic devices in smart grids, paves ground to implement more accurate and intelligent fault location methods. This chapter presents a supervised-learning
fault location method for complex power transmission lines by using high- resolution voltage and current measurements data. The fault location methods
are developed for two complex high-voltage AC (HVAC) transmission systems,
(1) three-terminal transmission lines, (2) hybrid transmission lines. The pre- sented methodologies utilize discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and support
vector machine (SVM) as a supervised learning algorithm where the power
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00014-0
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
304 CHAPTER 14: Supervised Learning-Based Fault Location in Power Grids
system operating and fault conditions are taken into account through the learn-
ing steps of the SVM classifiers.
1 FUNDAMENTALS OF SVM
SVM was first introduced by Vapnik as a binary linear supervised classification algorithm [1]. The original SVM classifier separates data sets with two binary
classes ({+1,�1}), by finding an optimal hyperplane. The linear hyperplane is defined as
WTx + b ¼ � 1, class + 1� �1, class�1 �
(1)
where x2Rn�1 is the input vector with n features, W2Rn�1 is a weight vector, and b is a bias term. The linear separating hyperplane for a binary linear SVM in a two-dimensional space (i.e., n¼2) is shown in Fig. 1. The separation margin (m) between two classes is calculated as
m ¼ 2 Wk k (2)
where kWk is the 2-norm of the weight vector. In order to maximize the sepa- ration margin, kWk is minimized. Therefore, the maximum margin can be established by solving the following quadratic optimization problem
min 1
2 Wk k2 (3)
subject to yi W Txi + b
� � � 1 (4)
where xi is the ith input vector and yi2{+1,�1} is the corresponding label for xi.
FIG. 1
The two-dimensional feature space with optimal separating hyperplane.
3051 Fundamentals Of SVM
The solution of the optimization problem provides the values of W and b such
that the separation margin between the two classes is maximum. In order to solve the above optimization problem, the duality theorem is used and the
SVM parameters are obtained by solving the following dual problem
max L αð Þ ¼ XN i¼1
αi �2�1 XN i¼1
XN j¼1
αiαjyiyjxixj (5)
subject to XN i¼1
αiyi ¼ 0 (6)
αi � 0 (7)
where αi is the Lagrangian multiplier and N is the number of labeled training data set.
Once the dual optimization problem is solved, the training points with αi∗ > 0 are identified as the support vectors (SVs), and W∗ and b∗ are then calculated as
W∗ ¼ XNSV i¼1
α∗i yixi (8)
b∗ ¼ 1 NSV
XNSV i¼1
yi �W∗xi !
(9)
where NSV is the number of obtained SVs.
In most data-driven power systems application, the input feature vectors are not
linearly separable in the original input space. Therefore, they can be mapped
into a higher dimensional feature space using a nonlinear function Φ to obtain a linearly separable data set. As the calculation of the inner product of Φ in higher dimensional feature space is computationally complex, kernel function
k is utilized to calculate the inner product directly as a function of the original input vectors. Thus, the SVMs are obtained by solving the following optimiza-
tion problem
max L αð Þ ¼ XN i¼1
αi �2�1 XN i¼1
XN j¼1
αiαjyiyjk xi, xj � �
(10)
subject to XN i¼1
αiyi ¼ 0 (11)
where k(xi,xj) is the kernel function.
Thus, the optimization problem is solved and the training points with αi ∗>0 are
the SVs. The optimal decision function is then expressed as
306 CHAPTER 14: Supervised Learning-Based Fault Location in Power Grids
sign X i2SV
α∗i yik x, xið Þ + b∗ !
¼ > 0, class + 1 < 0, class�1
� (12)
b∗ ¼ 1 NSV
XNSV i¼1
yi � XNSV j¼1
α∗j yjk xi, xj � � !
(13)
The kernel functions such as linear, sigmoidal, and Gaussian radial basis func- tion (RBF) are the most commonly used in power systems application. The
Gaussian RBF is chosen for supervised learning-based fault location due to
its better performance. The Gaussian RBF kernel function is given as
k xi, xj � �
¼ exp � xi �xj �� ���� ��2� �=γ� � (14)
where xi and xj are n-dimensional input vectors, γ ¼2σ2, σ is the standard devi- ation of the Gaussian function. The kernel function parameter (γ) needs to be tuned only once in order to achieve sufficient classification accuracy.
2 POWER SYSTEM APPLICATIONS OF SVM
SVM has been extensively used for numerous power system applications that are categorized as:
• Power quality (PQ) analysis such as disturbance classification. • Power system protection.
• Voltage and rotor angle stability prediction.
• Energy price forecasting and load forecasting. • Fault classification and fault location.
PQ study has become an important issue in recent years due to large applica-
tions of inverter-based energy resources and transactive-based load controllers.
Harmonics, voltage swell, voltage sag, and the power interruption can down- grade the power supply quality. The detection of power disturbances is an
important tool to ensure the PQ of supply and to detect location and type of
disturbances. The authors in Ref. [2] propose a new method of PQ classification based on SVM and neural network. Space phasor is used for feature extraction
from three-phase measurements to create suitable patterns for classifiers. The
trained classifier is utilized for different disturbance classification including voltage sags, voltage fluctuations, and voltage transients. Ref. [3] presents an
integrated model for PQ disturbances recognition using a novel wavelet multi-
class SVM. It combines linear SVMs and the disturbances-versus-normal approach to form the multiclass SVM, which is capable of processing multiple
classification problems.
3072 Power System Applications Of SVM
Protective relays may mal-operate or the required information may be missed
for a proper relay action. Supportive protection systems are required to aid the conventional protection by providing selective and secure coordination. SVMs
have considerable potential as zone classifiers for distance relay coordination.
This typically requires a multiclass SVM classifier to effectively analyze and to build the underlying concept between the reach of different zones and the
apparent impedance trajectory during a fault. Several methods have been pro-
posed for multiclass classification where typically several binary SVM classifiers are combined together. In Ref. [4], one-step multiclass classification, one-
against-all, and one-against-one multiclass methods are compared for their per-
formance with respect to accuracy, training, and testing time. Ref. [5] proposes a new machine learning approach for protective relays based on binary SVMs,
and communications between the protective relays and the supervisory control
and data acquisition, which is called smart protective relays. The goal of smart relays is to classify and discriminate the normal conditions from fault condi-
tions using local measurements. It is shown that the proposed SVM-based smart relays can detect the location of an initial fault using local current, volt-
age, real power, and reactive power measurements. Smart relays can make a cor-
rect decision even when the state of the system changes after some equipment failure.
Real-time monitoring of power system stability is an essential task to prevent
blackouts. In case of a disturbance leading to transient instability, fast recogni- tion of the instability conditions is crucial for allowing sufficient time to take
emergency control actions. In Ref. [6], a new method for rotor angle stability
prediction in a power system immediately after a large disturbance is presented. The proposed two-stage method first estimates the similarity of post-fault volt-
age trajectories of the generator buses after the disturbance to some preidenti-
fied templates. The stability status prediction is then carried out using SVM classifier which takes the similarity values calculated at the different generator
buses as the inputs. In Ref. [7], a method based on SVM classifier is presented
for rotor angle stability prediction. Generator voltages, frequencies, measured by phasor measurements units immediately after the fault clearance, are used as
the inputs for the SVM classifier.
Electricity price forecasting is a difficult and essential task for market partici-
pants in a deregulated electricity market. Market participants are sometimes
more interested in forecasting the prediction interval of the electricity price, rather than forecasting the value [8]. The prediction interval forecasting is
essential to estimate the uncertainty involved in the price. Thus, it is useful
to make generation bidding strategies and investment decisions. In Ref. [8], a novel data mining-based algorithm is proposed to achieve two major objec-
tives: to accurately forecast the value of the electricity price series, which is
widely accepted as a nonlinear time series, and to accurately estimate the
308 CHAPTER 14: Supervised Learning-Based Fault Location in Power Grids
prediction interval of the electricity price series. In the proposed method, SVM
is used to forecast the value of the price.
Short-term load forecasting (STLF) is the basis for power system planning
and operation. Many power system operations, such as unit commitment, economic dispatch, maintenance scheduling, and planning, are performed
effectively with accurate STLF results. The use of SVM for STLF was initially
introduced in Ref. [9]. Another STFT method, based on an adaptive two-stage hybrid network with self-organized map (SOM) and SVM, is presented in
Ref. [10]. In the first stage, the SOM network is applied to cluster the input data
set into several subsets in an unsupervised manner. As the second stage, SVMs are used to fit the training data of each subset.
3 FAULT CLASSIFICATION AND LOCATION FOR THREE-TERMINAL TRANSMISSION LINES
Three-terminal systems are used in power transmission networks to connect
three power sources, A, B, and C. The power sources are either generators
or Thevenin equivalent of a connected network. As shown in Fig. 2, the three terminals are connected through a T-point which does not have any measure-
ments or protection devices. This section presents SVM-based fault classifica-
tion and location algorithms. The main contributions of the presented methods over the state-of-the-art algorithms are
• The proposed method uses SVM for fault type and faulty line
identification based on unsynchronized high-frequency measurements
from only two substations. • The proposed faulty-half identification is based on SVM classifier. The
state-of-the-art algorithms are based on the time delay between the arrival
time of the initial traveling waves in ground mode and aerial mode. Therefore, the SVM-based approach reduces the sensitivity of traveling
FIG. 2
Three-terminal transmission lines with two unsynchronized high-resolution measurements.
3093 Fault Classification And Location For Three-Terminal Transmission Lines
wave-based fault location to the possible errors resulting from time delay
calculation, especially for the faults close to the middle of the lines.
• The proposed methodologies need a smaller set of input feature vector for the SVM classifiers compared to the state-of-the-art supervised
learning-based algorithms.
3.1 SVM-Based Fault Classification
In this section, an SVM-based fault type classification algorithm is presented. Four binary support vector machines, SVMi (i ¼ 1,…,4), are used to classify the type of fault. The labeled fault data is used to train the SVMs to detect
the fault at phases a, b, c and ground. The output of each SVMi (i ¼ 1,..,4) is either +1 or �1 which implicates if the fault happens in the corresponding phase or not. As an example if the outputs of SVM1 and SVM4 are +1 and
the rest are �1, the fault is classified as a phase-a-to-ground fault. In order to train the SVM classifiers, different labeled fault scenarios in a given
topology are used. The performance of the trained SVM classifiers is validated
by utilizing other fault scenarios. The input features to each binary SVM clas- sifier are the normalized wavelet energies of post-fault three-phase and
ground-mode high-resolution voltages from substations A and B. In order to
verify the performance of different wavelets, the SVM classifiers are trained and evaluated using three commonly used wavelets: Daubechies-4 (db-4),
db-8, and Meyer. The accuracy of the fault location algorithm remains
unchanged for the three utilized wavelets. This section presented the results with db-4 mother wavelet as it is one of the widely adopted wavelets in power
system applications. The fault type classification algorithm requires the follow- ing steps to obtain the input features for the SVMs:
1. Unsynchronized three-phase high-resolution voltage measurement data is captured in substations A and B. The aerial and ground-mode
high-resolution voltages are obtained using Clarke transformation as
V0 V1 V2
2 4
3 5¼ 2
3
1
2
1
2
1
2
1 �1 2
�1 2
0
ffiffiffi 3
p
2 �
ffiffiffi 3
p
2
2 6666664
3 7777775
Va Vb Vc
2 4
3 5 (15)
where V0, V1, and V2 are the modal voltages, and Va, Vb, and Vc are three-phase
voltages. In the case of untransposed lines, the modal transformation matrix is used instead of Clarke transformation that can be obtained by any EMTP
software.
• Unsynchronized three-phase measurements
• Modal transformation
• Discrete wavelet transform • Normalized wavelet energies
• SVM-based fault type classification
1
2
3
4
FIG. 3
The flowchart of the SVM-based fault type classification.
310 CHAPTER 14: Supervised Learning-Based Fault Location in Power Grids
2. DWT is applied to the measured three-phase high-resolution voltages (Va, Vb, Vc) and the calculated ground-mode voltage (V0) for duration of
40 ms after the fault initiation at substations A and B. The wavelet
transformation coefficients (WTCs) are calculated in scale 2, and then squared denoted as WTC2s. The wavelet energies of the high-resolution
voltage measurements, EVk (k 2 {a,b,c and 0}), are calculated for one cycle after the fault initiation as
EiV ¼ XM�1 m¼0
WTC2i mð Þ, for i 2 a, b, c and 0f g (16)
where M is the number of samples in one cycle.
3. The normalized wavelet energies are calculated at each substations as
ENV i ¼ E
i V
EVa + EVb + EVc + EV0 , for i 2 a, b, c and 0f g (17)
4. The calculated normalized wavelet energies at substations A and B are used as the 8�1 input feature vector to the SVM-based fault type classifiers (Fig. 3).
3.2 Single-Ended Traveling Wave-Based Fault Location
The essential steps in traveling wave-based fault location algorithm in three- terminal transmission lines are faulty line and fault half identification.
SVM-based algorithms are used to identify the faulty line among the three
3113 Fault Classification And Location For Three-Terminal Transmission Lines
transmission lines, and then the faulty half in the identified line. Two new SVM
classifiers are first trained using the input feature vectors based on the unsyn- chronized high-resolution voltage measurements at substations A and B, for
faulty line identification. Three separate SVM classifiers associated with each
individual line are then trained for faulty half identification in the correspond- ing faulty line.
Fault or switching initiated transients are composed of forward and backward traveling waves. While these waves are traveling along the lines, reflections
occur due to the discontinuities such as the fault point, receiving or sending
end terminals of a line. These traveling waves continue to bounce back and forth between the fault point and the terminals until a post-fault steady state
is reached. Traveling wave’s behavior can be understood better by using the Lat-
tice diagram method. Fig. 4 shows a single-phase line with a fault at F. The Lattice diagram shows multiple reflections and refractions initiated by the fault.
τ is the travel time associated with the total length of the line.
t2 t1 +t 3t1 +t 3t2
t1ZB
ZA
B
A
F
t1 +t3t1 5t1
Time
Time
FIG. 4
Lattice diagram for a fault at point F.
SVM-LAT
No
No
Yes
Yes
SVM-LBT
SVMLAT half
SVMLBT half
SVMLCT half
1st half
2nd half
1st half
2nd half
1st half
2nd half
xBF = LBT v1 Δt
2
line
+ –
xAF = LAT v1 Δt
2
line
+ –
xAF = LAT v1 Δt
2
line
+
xAF = LAT v1 Δt
2
line
+ LCT –
xAF = v1 Δt
2
line
xBF = v1 Δt
2
line
FIG. 5
Hierarchical fault section and fault location algorithms for three-terminal transmission lines.
312 CHAPTER 14: Supervised Learning-Based Fault Location in Power Grids
The arrival times of the backward and forward traveling waves are indicated in Fig. 4. If the fault occurs at x miles away from bus A, the arrival time of the for-
ward traveling wave at bus B is t1 ¼ l�xυ , and the arrival time of the backward traveling wave at bus A is t2 ¼ xυ, where l is the total length of the line and ν is the traveling wave velocity. This information is utilized to locate the fault.
In three-phase transmission lines, there are three modes of traveling wave prop-
agation. Therefore, the traveling wave calculations have to be done in the modal domain for each mode separately. Once the faulty line and half are iden-
tified based on SVM classifiers, the single-ended traveling wave-based fault
location is carried out using the aerial mode (or mode-1) voltages at substation A or B. The hierarchical fault section identification and location algorithm is
shown in Fig. 5. It needs to be noted that for a fault identified in line AT or
CT, the mode-1 voltage at substation A is used to observe the traveling wave arrival times, and calculate the fault distance with respect to substation A.
On the other hand, for a fault identified line BT, the mode-1 voltage at substa-
tion B is used to calculate the fault distance with respect to substation B. In Fig. 5, Δt (s) is the time difference between the first and the second peaks of WTC2s at substation A or B corresponding to the backward traveling wave and the reflected backward traveling wave from the fault point respectively,
and v1 line (mi/s) is the traveling wave velocity on the identified faulty line.
3.3 Results and Discussion
In order to validate the performance of the proposed fault classification and location algorithms, a 230-kV 60-Hz three-terminal transmission systems
with LAT ¼ 200 mi, LBT ¼ 180 mi, and LCT ¼ 170 mi is simulated using an
3133 Fault Classification And Location For Three-Terminal Transmission Lines
open-source Electromagnetic Transient Program called ATP [11]. Numerous
scenarios are simulated with respect to fault type, location, resistance, inception angle, and lines loading to resemble all possible fault conditions. Gaussian
noises with the mean equal to zero and standard deviation (σ) equal to 1% of the sampled measurements are added to the high-resolution voltage data at substations A and B. The fault type classification is carried out using four
trained SVMs with Gaussian RBF kernel function, associated with each phase
and ground. Fig. 6 shows the classification accuracies for phases a, b, c, and ground.
The faulty line identification is then executed using two trained SVMs with Gaussian RBF kernel function. The average accuracy of faulty line identification
using two SVMs with kernel parameters, γ1¼0.9 and γ2¼1.1, is 97.4%. Three SVM-based faulty half classifiers are then trained and evaluated using the cre- ated fault scenarios. The obtained accuracies for SVMhalf LAT γ ¼ 1:3ð Þ, SVMhalf LBT γ ¼ 1:1ð Þ, and SVMhalf LCT γ ¼ 1:5ð Þ are 99%, 99%, and 98%, respectively.
Illustrative test case: As an illustrative test case, a phase-a-to-ground fault is
assumed to occur in line AT at 60 mi from substation A. Once the fault type, faulty line, and half are identified using trained SVM classifiers, the obtained
wavelet transformation coefficient squared (WTC2) at bus A is observed to iden-
tify the first and second traveling waves as shown in Fig. 7. The time difference between the first and second traveling waves is Δt ¼ 0.00065 s, and the aerial- mode traveling wave velocity is 1.85 � 105 mil/s. Therefore, the fault location is calculated as
x ¼ 65�10 �5 �1:85�105
2 ¼ 60:125 mi
Phase a
A cc
u ra
cy (
% )
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
Phase b
Phase
Fault phase classification
Phase c Ground
FIG. 6
Fault type classification accuracies using four SVM-based classifiers.
0.01
× 109
0
0.5 W
T C
2
1
1.5
First traveling wave t = 0.01034 s
Second traveling wave t = 0.01099 s
2
2.5
0.0105
Time (s)
0.011 0.0115
FIG. 7
WTC 2 at bus A for a phase-a-to-ground fault at 60 mi from substation A in line AT.
E rr
o r
(% )
0 1
AT AT AT
AT
BT
BT
BT
CT
CT
CT
CT
0.1
0.05
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4
2 3 4 5 6
Fault location
7 8 9 10 11 12
BT
FIG. 8
Fault location errors in line AT, BT, and CT.
314 CHAPTER 14: Supervised Learning-Based Fault Location in Power Grids
The fault location is carried out for a wide range of actual fault location in
lines AT, BT, and CT and the errors are calculated using
error %ð Þ ¼ AFD�CFD Total section length
100, where AFD is the actual fault distance and
CFD is the calculated fault distance. Fig. 8 shows the fault location error for
3154 Fault Location For Hybrid HVAC Transmission Lines
12 different faults in lines AT, BT, and CT ranging from 4 mi from substation A
to 3 mi from substation B and 9 mi from substation C.
Effect of fault parameters: In order to assess the performance of the proposed
fault classification and location algorithm, fault parameters such as fault incep- tion angle, fault resistance, and nonideal faults such as nonlinear high-
impedance fault are considered through numerous simulation results. Faults
are simulated for a wide range of resistance from 0.01 to 90 Ω, fault inception angles varying between 5 and 350 degrees. Dynamic time-varying nonlinear
high impedance and inductive faults are studied to validate the performance
of the proposed techniques [11].
4 FAULT LOCATION FOR HYBRID HVAC TRANSMISSION LINES
Hybrid HVAC transmission lines are composed of underground cables com- bined with overhead lines, and are used when right-of-way issues arise or
to connect offshore wind farms to the grid. The proliferation of such complex
systems poses difficulties for post-fault analysis such as fault location for sys- tem operators and maintenance crews. After an unprecedented event in Den-
mark in February 2015, when Dong Energy’s 400-MW Anholt offshore wind
farm in Danish waters had not transmitted electricity to the onshore grid for at least 3 weeks because of a subsea cable fault that occurred, it has been accepted
that accurate identification of faulty segment is required. Repairing sea cables
is far more difficult and time consuming than repairing cables on land. Thus, accurate fault location is needed to exactly pinpoint the location of a cable fail-
ure in a timely manner which results in power system reliability improvement,
quick restoration of the power service, and reduction in outage time.
In this section, a single-ended traveling wave-based fault location algorithm is
proposed as shown in Fig. 9. The state-of-the-art traveling wave fault location is improved by using SVM classifier for faulty line and faulty half identification.
The proposed SVM classifiers are independent of the fault type.
FIG. 9
Hybrid HVAC transmission line.
316 CHAPTER 14: Supervised Learning-Based Fault Location in Power Grids
The input features for the faulty line and half SVM-based classifiers are
obtained as:
1. Three-phase high-resolution voltage and current measurement data is captured in substation A, using optical voltage and current transducers.
The aerial and ground-mode voltages and current are obtained using
Eq. (15). 2. DWT is applied to the measured three-phase voltages, currents, and the
calculated ground-mode voltage and current for duration of 40 ms after
the fault initiation at substation A. The wavelet transformation coefficients (WTCs) are calculated in scale 2, and then squared denoted as
WTC2s. The wavelet energies are calculated for one cycle after the fault
initiation using Eq. (16), and then normalized using Eq. (17). 3. The calculated normalized wavelet energies are used as the 8�1 input
feature vector to the SVM-based classifiers.
4.1 Single-Ended Traveling Wave-Based Fault Location
The single-ended fault location algorithm is based on SVM-based faulty line and fault half identification. The SVM classifiers are first trained using the fea-
ture vectors that are calculated using high-resolution voltage and current mea-
surements at only substation A. One SVM classifier is trained for faulty line identification and two SVM classifiers are used for faulty half identification
associated with the faulty line.
Once the faulty line and half are identified based on SVM classifiers, the single-
ended traveling wave-based fault location is carried out using the aerial-mode
(or mode-1) voltages at substation A. The hierarchical fault section identifica- tion and location algorithm is shown in Fig. 10. In Fig. 10, Δt (s) is the time difference between the first and the second peaks of WTC2s at substation A cor-
responding to the backward traveling wave and the reflected backward traveling
1st half
2nd half
1st half
2nd half
xAF = Lline v1 Δt
2
line
–
xAF = Lline v1 Δt
2
cable
+ Lcable –
xAF = Lline v1 Δt
2
cable
+
xAF = v1 Δt
2
line
SVMcable half
SVMline half
SVMsection
FIG. 10
Hierarchical faulty section and fault location algorithm for hybrid HVAC transmission lines.
3174 Fault Location For Hybrid HVAC Transmission Lines
wave from the fault point respectively, v1 line (mi/s) is the traveling wave velocity
on the overhead line, and v1 cable (mi/s) is the traveling wave velocity on the
underground cable.
4.2 Results and Discussion
The validation of the performance of the proposed fault location algorithm is
carried out through simulation of a 230-kV 60-Hz hybrid transmission systems
with Lline ¼ 100 mi, Lcable ¼ 20 mi [12]. Several fault scenarios are simulated with respect to fault type, location, resistance, inception angle, and system load-
ing to resemble all possible fault and system conditions. Gaussian noises with
mean of equal to zero and a standard deviation (σ) equal to 1% of the sampled measurements are added to the high-resolution voltage and current measure-
ments. The faulty line and half identification are carried out using three trained
SVMs. Fig. 11 shows the identification accuracies using three kernel functions, Gaussian RBF, polynomial, and linear.
The fault location is carried out for a wide range of fault in the overhead line or underground cable. The errors are calculated using
error %ð Þ ¼ AFD�CFD Total section length
100, where AFD is the actual fault distance
and CFD is the calculated fault distance. Fig. 12 shows the fault location error
with Gaussian RBF kernel function for 12 different faults in the overhead line
A c c u
ra c y (
% )
0 RBF
40
20
60
80
100
120
Poly Lin RBF Poly Lin RBF Poly Lin
Kernel function
FIG. 11
Faulty section identification errors using three kernel functions, SVMsection (blue), SVMline half
(red), and
SVMcable half
(green).
A c c u
ra c y (
% )
0
1
0.5
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
1
OH OH
OH
OH OH
OH UG
UG
UG
UG
UG
UG
2 3 4 5 6 Faulty section
7 8 9 10 11 12
FIG. 12
Faulty location errors in overhead line and underground cable.
318 CHAPTER 14: Supervised Learning-Based Fault Location in Power Grids
or underground cable ranging from 5 mi from substation A to 2 mi from sub-
station B.
Effect of fault parameters and sensitivity analysis: In order to analyze the perfor- mance of the proposed fault location method and assess the sensitivity of
the algorithm, the fault parameters, i.e., fault type, fault inception angle, fault resistance, nonideal faults such as nonlinear high-impedance fault are simu-
lated. All 10 types of faults with a wide range of resistance from 0.01 to
100 Ω are considered. Fault inception angles changes between 5 and 350 degrees, and dynamic time-varying nonlinear high impedance and inductive
faults are studied to validate the performance of the proposed techniques.
Furthermore, the effects of cable aging on the accuracy of the single-ended fault location algorithm are assessed. Fault location accuracy degradation over time
can be addressed by introducing a correction factor, which translates the change
in cable parameters to a change in velocity. The correction factor is determined by carrying out site tests in certain time intervals or by employing a parameter
estimation tool.
5 SUMMARY
In this chapter, supervised-learning SVM-based fault location methods are dis-
cussed for complex power transmission lines that are based on high-resolution voltage and current measurements data. The high-resolution measurements are
obtained using high-precision optical voltage and current transducers. The
319References
SVM-based fault location algorithms are discussed for two complex HVAC
transmission systems, (1) three-terminal transmission lines, (2) hybrid trans- mission lines. The presented methodologies are developed based on DWT
and SVM as a supervised learning algorithm. The power system operating
and fault conditions are taken into account through the learning steps of the SVM classifiers.
References [1] V. Vapnik, Statistical Learning Theory, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, 1998.
[2] P. Janik, T. Lobos, Automated classification of power-quality disturbances using SVM and RBF networks, IEEE Trans. Power Del. 21 (3) (2006) 1663–1669.
[3] W.M. Lin, C.H. Wu, C.H. Lin, F.S. Cheng, Detection and classification of multiple power qual- ity disturbances with wavelet multiclass SVM, IEEE Trans. Power Del. 23 (4) (2008)
2575–2582.
[4] B. Ravikumar, D. Thukaram, H.P. Khincha, Comparison of multiclass SVM classification methods to use in a supportive system for distance relay coordination, IEEE Trans. Power
Del. 25 (3) (2010) 1296–1305.
[5] Y. Zhang, M.D. Ilic, O.K. Tonguz, Mitigating blackouts via smart relays: a machine learning approach, IEEE Proc. 99 (1) (2011) 94–118.
[6] A.D. Rajapakse, F. Gomez, K. Nanayakkara, P.A. Crossley, V.V. Terzija, Rotor angle instability prediction using post-disturbance voltage trajectories, IEEE Trans. Power Syst. 25 (2) (2010)
947–956.
[7] F.R. Gomez, A.D. Rajapakse, U.D. Annakkage, I.T. Fernando, Support vector machine based algorithm for post-fault transient stability status prediction using synchronized measure-
ments, IEEE Trans. Power Syst. 26 (3) (2011) 1474–1483.
[8] J. Hua Zhao, Z.Y. Dong, Z. Xu, K.P. Wong, A statistical approach for interval forecasting of the electricity price, IEEE Trans. Power Syst. 23 (2) (2008) 267–276.
[9] B.J. Chen, M.W. Chang, C.J. Lin, Load forecasting using support vector machines: a study on EUNITE competition 2001, IEEE Trans. Power Syst. 19 (4) (2004) 1821–1830.
[10] Y. Wang, Q. Xia, C. Kang, Secondary forecasting based on deviation analysis for short-term
load forecasting, IEEE Trans. Power Syst. 26 (2) (2011) 500–507.
[11] H. Livani, C.Y. Evrenosoglu, A fault classification and location method for three-terminal
circuits using machine learning, IEEE Trans. Power Del. 28 (4) (2013) 2282–2290.
[12] H. Livani, C.Y. Evrenosoglu, A machine learning and wavelet-based fault location method for
hybrid transmission lines, IEEE Trans. Power Del. 5 (1) (2014) 51–59.
- Supervised Learning-Based Fault Location in Power Grids
- Fundamentals of SVM
- Power System Applications of SVM
- Fault Classification and Location for Three-Terminal Transmission Lines
- SVM-Based Fault Classification
- Single-Ended Traveling Wave-Based Fault Location
- Results and Discussion
- Fault Location for Hybrid HVAC Transmission Lines
- Single-Ended Traveling Wave-Based Fault Location
- Results and Discussion
- Summary
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-15---Data-Driven-Voltage-Unbalance-Analys_2018_Big-Data-Application-.pdf
CHAPTER 15
Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
Matthias Stifter*, Ingo Nader†
*AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center of Energy, Vienna, Austria, †Unbelievable Machine, Vienna, Austria
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
More data from various sources enable in-depth analysis of various network parameters. Efficient
analysis requires the use and adaption of methods developed for big data applications, like MapRe- duce for parallel in-database processing. This chapter investigates the applicability of data-driven
methods and interactive data visualization to discover new insight into low-voltage network states.
The use of MapReduce functions based on Open Source Software like R or Java is demonstrated in combination with a commercial distributed analytics database. These customized functions are
applied to analyze unbalance voltage conditions in low-voltage networks and discover and explore
the reasons by relating it to other events in the network. The discovery process is supported by inter-
active visualization methods, like affinity graphs for representing collaborative filters. Performance comparisons to conventional database concepts are discussed at the end of the chapter.
CHAPTER POINTS
Data, methods, and technologies for data analysis Adaption of MapReduce functions based on open source programming
languages in combination with commercial analytical database Discovery based on interactive visualization Performance comparison
321
1 INTRODUCTION
With the increase of sensor and metering devices, like phasor measurement
units and rollout of smart meters, better knowledge about system behavior and network states will be available. But these benefits come together with
increasing amount of data, which has to be communicated, processed, stored,
and analyzed. It turns out that conventional applications are not capable of handling the data and utility IT systems have been not designed with respect
to integrating large amounts of data.
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00015-2
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
322 CHAPTER 15: Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
Many different research questions and applications have been addressed based
on analytics of sensor and meter data. Applications and needs for analyzing data have been successfully demonstrated. They reach from better understand-
ing of the network [1] and loads [2], improving forecasts and prediction [3] to
business-driven objectives [4] and high-resolution low-voltage monitoring frameworks [5]. Clustering-based methods of voltages have been investigated
in [6] to identify topology and connectivity. The authors in [7] present an
approach assign sensors to their feeder location based on covariance clustering of voltages.
A number of companies have business and data analytics solutions in their portfolio, offering computational efficient and state-of-the-art data processing
frameworks. Opposed to available commercial products, top languages for sta-
tistics, data analytics, and data science are dominated by open source software, like Gnu R, Python, or the Hadoop ecosystem, as several rankings and polls on
the Internet report.
Beside an efficient data analytics programming language, a high-performance
parallel processing system is necessary to cope with the amount of data. Clus-
ters are evolving into cloud concepts, where computational power can be aggre- gated and managed to perform the required work load. An overview about
concepts of cloud computing for smart grid applications can be found in
[8]. Technology providers announce “big data” solutions for the energy utili- ties, where technology often has its origin from other domains, like telecom-
munication. Main differences of the processing requirements are volumes,
velocity, and variety, where velocity regards to speed for collecting and proces- sing data, often within real-time. Current trends and recommendations favor
Hadoop-based technology and utilization of MapReduce technology for meet-
ing future requirements on storing and analyzing massive data [9]. One exam- ple of data model integration is the design of Common Information Model
[10]-based model databases on HBase—open source, nonrelational, distrib-
uted database—with a Hadoop-based query technology presented in [11].
2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
A factor for limiting hosting capacity of renewable generators in low-voltage
distribution networks is the unbalance due to single phase loads and genera-
tors. With the ability to monitor, identify, and reduce high unbalances, thus increasing the available voltage band, networks can be better utilized and oper-
ated more cost effectively. High-resolution (and time-synchronized) measure-
ments from smart meters make it possible to discovery various effects and relations which are not observable by existing conventional methods of
monitoring.
3232 Problem Statement
2.1 Unbalance in Low-Voltage Distribution Networks
Unbalanced loads cause a neutral point displacement in three-phase/four- wire low-voltage distribution networks due to additional voltage drop in
the neutral line (see Fig. 1). For this reasons some grid codes assess the voltage
rise due to single-phase generators (e.g., inverters of photovoltaic systems) with the threefold increase, caused by the zero-sequence component. Unbal-
ance is also harmful for many motors and cause additional losses in lines and
transformers.
In general, low-voltage distribution grids have a star topology and feeders are
operated in open meshes which can be manually connected in case of mainte- nance or outages. Therefore, the unbalance effects are feeder dependent. Fig. 2
shows the spread of the voltages between three phases of one feeder.
Investigations have shown that the used voltage band can be decreased if the unbalancing is reduced by switching of two phases—keeping the same
rotation—in cable boxes [12].
2.2 Utilized Voltage Band
The highest and lowest voltage in the network has to be between the allowed
voltage limits. Beside unbalance in the phases, loads with high-power con- sumption can cause high-voltage drops along the line. In case of generation
the voltage can increase due to reverse of power flow and therefore increase
the used voltage band in the network (decrease voltage band reserve). The used voltage band should be narrow in order to allow, for example, on-load tap
changers to operate.
L1 N N
L3
L2
U1N
U2N
U3N
FIG. 1
Unsymmetrical voltages and neutral point displacement due to unbalanced loads.
Z o
n e 2
230.0
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 0.45 0.50
230.5 231.0 231.5 232.0 232.5 233.0 233.5 234.0 234.5 235.0
FIG. 2
Voltage drop diagram showing the spread between the phases (red, blue, green) along the distance from
the substation.
324 CHAPTER 15: Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
3 DATA ACQUISITION AND STORAGE
3.1 Smart Meter Data Acquisition System
The so-called Power Snap Shot Analysis (PSSA) method [13] has been devel-
oped based on time-synchronous measurements of voltage, angle, active, and reactive power of all three phases. During the measurement snapshot cycle
of 15 min every meter records the mentioned measurements for every second,
thus resulting in 900 � 18 measurements plus additional 10 and 15 min means of the voltage. Due to the limited bandwidth in power line carrier (PLC)-based
smart meter systems, only a selected subset of the meters (trigger meters) send-
ing their three most relevant events, for example, highest or lowest voltage, or highest unbalance, to the data concentrator (DC). The DC decides what are the
most interesting timestamps of the measurement cycle. Up to ten synchronous
snapshots are then requested from every meter in the network, resulting in approx. 3000 data points for every snapshot.
The snapshots are transmitted over a central server to the analysis framework, the so-called PSS Host [14] where the XML-based files are parsed and loaded
into a PostgreSQL relational database [15]. The PSS Analyzer is a graphical user
front end, which can provide statistical analysis and visualization of the snap- shots. In addition, measurement data can be used to feed and run a network
simulator. The network model is also used to visualize the voltage drop diagram
(Fig. 2) and other diagrams based on the geographical information.
Currently the snapshot datasets contain more than 1 million snapshots (3 billion
measurements) from about 35 low-voltage networks. The number of networks is
steadily increasing depending on the demand for analysis. In the area of Upper
Table 1 Measurement Data Set
Total Rows Voltage Measurementsa Date
100 millions 14.1 millions June 2014
800 millions 97 millions August 2015
a Each measurement/row contains a vector of three phases.
Table 2 Measurement Data Set
Characteristics Network A Network B Network C
Transformer (kVA) 630 400 800
Feeders 9 8 8
Customers 145 193 271
Max. feeder length 2307 m 1079 m 447 mm
3254 Distributed Data Processing
Austria alone there are more than 8000 low-voltage networks. Table 1 shows the
total number and voltage measurements.
Table 2 shows the characteristic of three exemplary low-voltage networks.
3.2 Distributed Database Storage
For analysis the data are loaded into the Teradata Aster Discovery Platform,
which is a PostgreSQL-based, fully parallel database with additional function- ality for data preparation and data analysis. This functionality includes compu-
tations performed in the MapReduce framework [16] that has been integrated
into the SQL framework to make it easily accessible. The discovery platform allows performing the analysis without data movement (in-database proces-
sing), using predefined MapReduce functionality as well as custom functions
which can be coded in various programming languages (Java and R were used for the present analyses).
4 DISTRIBUTED DATA PROCESSING
4.1 Statistical Method
Data discovery was performed using the statistical programming language R (Version 3.0.2) [17], Java, and the Teradata Aster Discovery Platform [18]
using standard functionality as well as additionally implemented code for event
generation (described later) developed by the authors. For analyzing the con- nection between meters, the power snapshot data have been processed by a cus-
tom MapReduce function to generate distinct events. These events were used as
326 CHAPTER 15: Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
inputs to the collaborative filtering algorithm as implemented in the Teradata
Aster Analytics Foundation, release number 5.11.
Collaborative filtering (CFilter) operates on defined events and determines how frequently they are happening together. A popular example is recommen- dations on books according to other customers preferences. A statistical confi-
dence for the probability that they are happening together is calculated. The
implemented Aster SQL-MR function provides figures for support, confidence, lift, z-score, and raw score probability [19]. CFilter provides the following calculation on eventi and eventj:
Cooccurrence: Count of cooccurrence of both events
Ni\j ¼ X eventi
eventj
Score: Product of two conditional probabilities
Si\j ¼ PðeventijeventjÞ � PðeventjjeventiÞ
Support: Percentage among all events, when the two events cooccur
Spi\j ¼ Ni\j=Ntotal
Confidence: Percentage of eventj occurrences in all events in which eventi occurs
Ci\j ¼ Ni\j .X
eventj:
Lift: Ratio of the observed to the expected support value
Lifti\j ¼ Spi\jX
eventi=Ntotal � X
eventj=Ntotal
where Lift > 1 expresses a positive effect of eventi and eventj on the occur-
rence of the other events, Lift < 1 a negative effect, and Lift ¼ 0 no effect. ZScore measure of the significance of the cooccurrence
ZScore ¼ Ni\j=σðNi\jÞ
It can be visualized as a “sigma” graph with Aster Lens, showing nodes and their
relationship as edges between them. For meters to be connected, they need to
have the same event (strong asymmetry) at the same snapshot. The more often this connection exists, over the whole set of power snapshots, the stronger is the
link between the meters.
Method developmentAster DB: Discovery
Data
Hadoop: Data Lake
IDE (eclipse)
Data
Data Act/install
SQL-H
Development and application
Scalable storage Distributed parallel processing
Method application
Analysis application (Teradata Studio, Java Application)Query
R, Java MapReduce function
FIG. 3
Developing and deploying MapReduce functions into the distributed database.
3275 Data Discovery
4.2 Distributed Queries and Functions
The method of developing and injecting map/reduce functions—written for
instance in R or Java and which are directly executed in the distributed
database—are shown in Fig. 3. The Hadoop-based scalable storage is optional and was not used for this analysis.
5 DATA DISCOVERY
5.1 Distribution of Voltages
Initially, the histogram of measured voltages per phase indicates that there is a certain number of unbalanced voltages occurrences. Even by finding a point in
time which corresponds to a power snapshot in Fig. 4, it is not obvious how this
unbalanced voltage state relates to any causal network condition.
5.2 Relation Between Meters With High Unbalance Events
For the discovery of unbalanced network situations the MapReduce-based anal-
ysis has been applied to all available snapshots for different networks. The objective is to find and quantify a common event, which happens at the same
time at other nodes as well (e.g., strong asymmetry). The unbalance between
the phases is discretized by the MapReduce function according to Table 3.
Next, the dependency of an event happening at the same time in other nodes is
investigated. Fig. 5 visualizes events as edges which link nodes where the event
has happened at the same time.
In network A, events of unbalanced voltages happening at the same time, are
shown in Fig. 5. By interactive selecting nodes in the graph it is seen that the events in feeder 1 are not happening together with events in other feeders
(e.g., feeder 3, feeder 4). But events from feeder 1 happen together with events
Table 3 Definition of Unbalance Events
Residuum Description Abbreviation
0–2 No asymmetry no_asym
2–5 Slight asymmetry slight_asym
5–9 Medium asymmetry meda_sym
>9 Strong asymmetry strong_aysm
FIG. 4
Histogram of the voltages per phase of one snapshot, showing strong asymmetric voltages. Note: The
vertical dashed line marks the trigger of this snapshot (determined by the lowest voltage of all of the
three phases).
328 CHAPTER 15: Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
in feeder 8, since they are connected by two red nodes (indicating a very high
number of events). It can be misleading that these events from feeder 1 are
caused by the same phenomena (e.g., high single-phase load). The network model reveals that these two—highly represented nodes—are at the very end
of the feeder, connected to the rest over a 400 m line. It is highly probable that
events of unbalance happen very often at the same time, but not physically related to events in feeder 1.
In network B (Fig. 6), simultaneous events are concentrated in feeder 6, feeder 4, and feeder 7. The interactive exploration shows that these events are concen-
trated on the feeder level, since affinities disappear when selecting the centers of
the clusters (red nodes and/or red edges).
Visualization of network C (Fig. 7) reveals events at the bottom of the figure.
These are unrelated to other rather global, events of unbalance in the network
and linking only a smaller number of nodes. A zoom on these isolated events in
FIG. 5
Network A: Visualization of relations of number of voltage unbalance events which are occurring at the
same time at meters. Note: A connection (edge) means only that there is also an event in the other
node at the same time, but not necessarily the same event.
3295 Data Discovery
Fig. 8 shows that these events are concentrated on one feeder. A closer look to
the network model and additional geographic data shows that they are all
located in a residential building, equipped with ripple controlled warm water boilers.
Analyzing the phenomena in depth reveals that the asymmetry event happens
during night time, at about 1 o’clock in the morning. Usually three phases are connected in random order at every household, only preserving the right rota-
tion of the electric field. Unfortunately, in this case all single-phased load
devices are connected to the same phase, thus resulting in a very high unbalance when all of them are switched on at the same time. To solve this issue load
switch devices have to be connected to arbitrary phases, so that they are statis-
tically even distributed among the phases again.
FIG. 6
Network B: Visualization of relations of number of voltage unbalance events (color and width of edges)
which are occurring at the same time at meters (color and size of nodes).
330 CHAPTER 15: Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
5.3 Timely Distribution of High Unbalance Events
To narrow the reason of events further investigation on the distribution of event times are made, to find additional information on inadvertent network states.
Data analysis in network A of day and hour (Figs. 9 and 10) events are taking place, reveal no evidence of unintended conditions. It is highly probable that
events are happening during the noon hours of the day time, where customers
are active. A similar distribution of events is found in Network B (not shown).
In network C, plotting the day of the events on the timeline give evidence that
this events are comparable rare and happening with month of distance in
between (Fig. 11). The histogram of the events per hour of the day shows that they are concentrated at night time around 1 o’clock (Fig. 12). This could be
taken as important criteria for discovering phenomena, since it gives evidence
that events are not happening randomly, but by determined cause.
FIG. 7
Network C: Visualizations of the number of voltage unbalance events at the same time (color of edges)
related to other meters. Note that the isolated events on the bottom are happening unrelated to all
other events in the network.
FIG. 8
Network C: Affinity graph. If an event of unbalance happens at one of the meters, an unbalance event
happens at the same time as well, but only at these meters. Note: This is a zoom on the lower right
part of the graph presented in Fig. 7.
3315 Data Discovery
24Sep13 0
50
100
150
200
250
26Sep13 28Sep13 30Sep13 02Oct13
Day
O cc
u rr
e n ce
s
04Oct13 06Oct13 08Oct13
FIG. 9
Network A: Distribution of unbalanced voltage events during the evaluation period.
0 0.00
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
0.25
0.30
0.35
0.40
5 10 15 20
Time of day (h)
D e g
re e
FIG. 10
Network A: Distribution of unbalanced voltage events for the hour of the day.
01Dec13 01Feb14 01Apr14 01Jun14 01Aug14 01Oct14 0
100
200
300
400
500
600
Day
O cc
u rr
e n ce
s
FIG. 11
Network C: Distribution of unbalanced voltage events during the evaluation period. Note that it points out to
be very rare events.
332 CHAPTER 15: Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
0 0.0
0.2
0.1
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
5 10 15 20
Time of day (h)
D e g
re e
FIG. 12
Network C: Distribution of unbalanced voltage events for the hour of the day. Note that most of the events
are taking place at 1 o’clock.
3335 Data Discovery
5.4 Relation Between Different Network States
Opposed to the previous analysis, now events are defined differently. Depend-
ing on the criteria of a network state, for example, single/three-phase asymme- try, single-phase high voltages, single/three-phase high active and reactive
powers, the following definitions are used:
Umax ¼ maxUiN i 2 1,2,3 (1) Umin ¼ minUiN i 2 1,2,3 (2) ΔU ¼ Umax �Umin (3)
�U ¼ 1 3
X3 i¼1
UiN (4)
Psum ¼ X3 i¼1
Pi ΔP ¼ Pmax �Pmin (5)
Qsum ¼ X3 i¼1
Qi ΔQ ¼ Qmax �Qmin (6)
In Table 4 the voltage, active, and reactive power criteria are listed with define the events calculated by the MapReduce function.
The earlier-defined events are then calculated for the networks under two dif-
ferent conditions:
1. Events which happen at the same moment in time within a snapshot, meaning all events which occur during the same moment in time in the
whole network (network perspective).
Table 4 Definition of Unsymmetry Events
Voltage
ΔU > 9 V asym_9v_voltage ΔU > 6 V asym_6v_voltage ΔU > 3 V asym_3v_voltage Voltage peaks (for single phases: max of all phases)
Umax > 253 V high_single_voltage_253v
Umax > 246.1 V high_single_voltage_246v
Voltage dips (for single phases: min of all phases)
Umin < 207 V low_single_voltage_207v
Umin < 221 V low_single_voltage_221v
Voltage peaks and dips (for all phases: mean over three phases) �U > 253 V high_mean_voltage_253v
�U > 246:1 V high_mean_voltage_246v
�U > 220 V (No event)
�U > 207 V low_mean_voltage_221v
�U < 207 V low_mean_voltage_207v
Active power
Psum > 40 kW peak_40kw_act_power
Psum > 25 kW peak_25kw_act_power
Active power asymmetry
ΔP > 20 kW asym_20kw_act_power ΔP > 12 kW asym_12kw_act_power ΔP > 7 kW asym_7kw_act_power ΔP > 4 kW asym_4kw_act_power Single-phase feed in
Pmin < �10 W and Pmax > 10 W single_phase_feed_in Pmax < �10 W multi_phase_feed_in Active power asymmetry
Qsum > 4 kW peak_4kw_react_power
ΔQ > 2 kW asym_2000w_react_power ΔQ > 1 kW asym_1000w_react_power ΔQ > 0.5 kW asym_500w_react_power
334 CHAPTER 15: Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
2. Events which happen at the same time at the same meter (meter perspective).
The resulting computed figures represent events which happen together at the same moment in time (meaning they are in the same snapshot) once from the
network perspective and once from the meter perspective.
To exemplify the difference between simultaneous events for the whole net-
work B (Fig. 13) and events occurring simultaneous in 1 m (Fig. 14), the focus
FIG. 13
Network B (events in the network): Interactive selection of event low_single_voltage_207v
(black frame), revealing other events taking place simultaneously in the whole network.
asym_9v_ voltage
low_mean_voltage_221v
low_single_voltage_207v
FIG. 14
Network B (events in meters): Interactive selection of event low_single_voltage_207v (black
frame) revealing other events taking place simultaneously in the meters.
3355 Data Discovery
336 CHAPTER 15: Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
on the event low_single_voltage_207v is displayed. While other events happen simultaneously in the network B (Fig. 13), events at the meters occur only with two other events: low_mean_voltage_221v and asym_9v_voltage (Fig. 14).
Fig. 15 shows the isolated occurrence of high_single_voltage_253v events in network C. In Fig. 16 the simultaneity of single feed-in with asymmet-
ric active and reactive power events is shown. This could be interpreted that a slight voltage unbalance is a frequent network situation, with the strongest rela-
tion to single-phase feed-in and asymmetric reactive power (1000 Var and
above) (Fig. 17).
single_phase_feed_in
asym_500w_react_power
low_single_voltage_221v
asym_9v_voltage
low_mean_voltage_221v
asym_6v_voltage
asym_1000w_react_power
asym_4kw_act_power
peak_4kw_react_power
asym_3v_voltage
high_mean_voltage_253v
high_single_voltage_253v
asym_2000w_react_power
peak_40kw_act_power
FIG. 15
Network C: Relation of events, which happen at the same moment in time, for individual meters. Events of
high_single_voltage_253v are independent from feed-in and asymmetry events.
asym_3v_voltage
low_single_voltage_221v
asym_6v_voltage
asym_1000w_react_power
asym_9v_voltage
low_mean_voltage_221v
FIG. 16
Network C (selection): Relations between different events, represented by links and colors. Single-phase
feed in of 4 kW correlates with asymmetric reactive power of 1 kW.
asym_500w_react_power
peak_4kw_react_power
single_phase_feed_in
asym_2000w_react_power
asym_1000w_react_power
FIG. 17
Network C (selection): Interactive visualization of event single_phase_feed_in that occurs
together with events of asymmetric reactive power consumption. It is not related to events of
low_single_voltage_221v.
3375 Data Discovery
5.5 Maximum and Minimum Voltage: Voltage Spread
In the next example, a MapReduce function MeterMinMax calculates maxi- mum and minimum voltage measurements of the three phases separately for every meter. For every measurement (row) which is processed, the minimal
FIG. 18
Maximum and minimum voltages of phase 1 per weekday and the corresponding averaging.
338 CHAPTER 15: Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
andmaximalvalueiscomparedtotheactual—storedinahashmap—andupdated if necessary. Aggregating and visualizing the maximum and minimum voltages of
the snapshots per weekday (Fig. 18) shows beside the typical voltage characteristic
extremevalues, which—in case ofunbalance—limit the available voltage bandfor in-feed. Continuous evaluation of the measurements can identify trends and
potentials for improvements (unbalance counter measurements).
6 PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS
This section investigates performance of MapReduce functions directly per-
formed within the distributed database compared to a traditional relational sin-
gle host database. The performance of two different custom MapReduce functions—implemented in Java—are investigated when executed as a MapRe-
duce function and executed in an external application which is fetching the data
from the database and inserting results back to it.
6.1 Comparison Requirements
The following criteria have been met in order to make the data processing com- parable in terms of execution time.
6.1.1 Code The program code for processing the data is effectively identical. While the MapReduce function implements specific interfaces for handling the input
and output rows (output emitter), the non-MapReduce function implements
3396 Performance Evaluations
standard “insert row” Java Data Base Connectivity (JDBC) statements (e.g.,
INSERT INTO table VALUES (...)). Table inserting operation time is sep- arated from the execution time for the non-MapReduce application.
6.1.2 Data The tests are conducted with the same raw data and results are validated to get
the same outcomes. PostgreSQL vector data type for holding the three-phase
values is not supported by Aster; therefore, it is transformed into three separate columns.
6.1.3 Database In order to compare the execution time on the functions, processing power has
to be comparable. PostgreSQL was installed on one of the virtual machine
(VM) worker nodes to have identical processing power. While one database runs idle without work load during the test of the other, the influence is
expected to be neglectable and the PostgreSQL server service has been stopped
during tests.
6.1.4 System The Aster database is processing in parallel for every node running in a VM on a server. Table 5 shows the system configuration of the VMs and the additional
PC benchmark system. The server has 6/2 CPU/Cores per CPUs and 24 GB
RAM and the PC 2/2 CPU/Cores per CPU and 16 GB RAM. The single-thread CPU Mark (second number) is comparable of the two systems. The Aster system
was tested with 2 * 3 GB RAM for the workers and 2 GB for the queen and with double memory of 2 * 6 GB and 4 GB RAM. The second configuration matches the 16 GB of the PC system.
Table 5 Definition of Unsymmetry Events
Node CPU Type RAM CPU/ Cores CPU Mark
Worker (VM) Intel Xeon CPU W3690 3.47 GHz 3/6 GB 2/1 9729 (1576)a
Queen (VM) Intel Xeon CPU W3690 3.47 GHz 2/4 GB 1/1 9729 (1576)a
PC Intel CPU i5-4300U 1.90 GHz 16 GB 2/2 9729 (1607)a
a Single-thread CPU Mark.
340 CHAPTER 15: Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
6.2 Evaluation Setup
Three setups are used: Aster MapReduce in-database processing, Java JDBC con- nection to Aster database and processing external, and Java JDBC connection to
PostgreSQL with external processing.
• Aster database cluster beehive: The used version of distributed database “Aster Express 5.10” comes in a preconfigured setup of one managing node (queen) and two worker nodes (worker1 and worker2). It runs under SUSE Linux Enterprise 11. Due to redundancy reasons the workers host virtual workers (primaries and secondaries) distributed on different nodes. Keeping them synchronized implies
some data exchange, but is not considered and investigated in detail for
these tests. • PostgreSQL worker1: The database was installed on worker1 and
has identical processing power. Concurrencies of database workloads
have been eliminated (stopping postgres service) or avoided (no activity on Aster). Also the Java application code is executed locally
(and remote for comparison). The performance is expected to be
approximately half of the performance of two workers under the Aster system.
• PostgreSQL localhost: Additional performance measurements on a local PC.
6.3 MapReduce Function CalcEventsLongFormat
The MapReduce function was executed on approximately 2M rows for each of the three networks. According to the Aster management console, the pro-
cessing time within the Aster database was about 2 seconds and the fetch time 3–4 s. This was comparable to both JDBC Java application runs, con- necting to Aster and to PostgreSQL, which needed slightly above 2 s for
processing.
6.4 MapReduce Function MeterMinMax
The size of the dataset was increased to 800M rows with about 100M voltage
measurement rows. While the execution of the MapReduce function had no problems with the 3 GB per worker node setup, it was not possible to run
the query over the JDBC connection. And as stated earlier for the PostgreSQL
setup it has been reduced to 100M voltage measurements and sliced to 10M queries using SQL LIMIT BY and OFFSET statements.
Table 6 shows comparisons results of the different configurations.
Table 6 Benchmark Results
Benchmark Fetch Time
(min) In-DB/Java
(s) Total (min)
Aster MapReduce 2 * 3 GB+2 GB 14 2 14 Aster MapReduce 2 * 6 GB+4 GB 9 2 9 Aster Java JDBC (local) 6 GB – 179 –
PostgreSQL JDBC (worker) 3 GB 50 127 52
PostgreSQL JDBC (worker) 6 GB 36 63 40
341References
7 CONCLUSION
This contribution shows the value and applicability to analyze large set of smart
meter and sensor data for gaining deeper insight into interesting network states.
The approach demonstrates application of open source-based data analytics in combination with commercial software packages. Visualization of complex
data is clearly an advantage when comprehending, understanding, and inter-
preting data. The benefit of a distributed parallel processing database shows up when it comes to large datasets and complex functions for evaluating and
processing data. Performance evaluations show an advantage over traditional
database concepts, which can be further improved by intelligent data distribu- tion to avoid costly data fetch processes. In 2016 the AIT Energy Data Analytics
Lab was put into operation on a 24 nodes cluster with 12 CPUs/128 GB RAM
per node including a Teradata Aster research installation containing 12 worker nodes. Current work includes analysis of smart meter and grid monitoring data
from various networks.
References [1] J. Wu, Y. He, N. Jenkins, A robust state estimator for medium voltage distribution networks,
IEEE Trans. Power Syst. 28 (2) (2013) 1008–1016, https://doi.org/10.1109/TPWRS. 2012.2215927.
[2] R. Silipo, P. Winters, Big Data, Smart Energy, and Predictive Analytics—time series prediction
of Smart Energy Data, KNIME, 2013.
[3] P. Zhang, X. Wu, X. Wang, S. Bi, Short-term load forecasting based on Big Data technologies,
CSEE J. Power Energy Syst. 1 (3) (2015) 59–67, https://doi.org/10.17775/CSEEJPES. 2015.00036.
[4] D. De Silva, A data mining framework for electricity consumption analysis from meter data,
IEEE Trans. Ind. Inform. 7 (3) (2011) 399–407.
[5] H. Maass, H.K. Cakmak, W. Suess, A. Quinte, W. Jakob, K.U. Stucky, U.G. Kuehnapfel, First
evaluation results using the new electrical data recorder for power grid analysis, IEEE Trans.
Instrum. Meas. 62 (9) (2013) 2384–2390, https://doi.org/10.1109/TIM.2013.2270923.
342 CHAPTER 15: Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
[6] V. Arya, R. Mitra, Voltage-based clustering to identify connectivity relationships in distribution
networks, in: 2013 IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications (SmartGridComm), 2013, pp. 7–12.
[7] K. Diwold, M. Stifter, P. Zehetbauer, Network and feeder assignment of smart meters based on
communication and measurement data, in: 2015 International Symposium on Smart Electric Distribution Systems and Technologies (EDST)2015, , pp. 541–546.
[8] M. Yigit, V.C. Gungor, S. Baktir, Cloud computing for smart grid applications, Comput. Netw. 70 (2014) 312–329, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2014.06.007.
[9] Y. Simmhan, S. Aman, A. Kumbhare, R. Liu, S. Stevens, Q. Zhou, V. Prasanna, Cloud-based
software platform for Big Data analytics in Smart Grids, Comput. Sci. Eng. 15 (4) (2013) 38–47, https://doi.org/10.1109/MCSE.2013.39.
[10] M. Uslar, M. Specht, S. Rohjans, J. Trefke, J.M. González, The Common Information Model
CIM-IEC 61968/61970 and 62325—A Practical Introduction to the CIM, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012. ISBN 978-3-642-25214-3.
[11] S. Zhang, J. Wang, B. Wang, Research on data integration of smart grid based on IEC61970 and cloud computing, in: D. Jin, S. Lin (Eds.), Advances in Electronic Engineering, Communica-
tion and Management, Vol. 1, Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, Springer, Berlin,
Heidelberg, 2012, pp. 577–582. 139 ISBN 978-3-642-27286-8 978-3-642-27287-5.
[12] B. Bletterie, S. Kadam, R. Pitz, A. Abart, Optimisation of LV networks with high photovoltaic
penetration—balancing the grid with smart meters, 2013 IEEE Grenoble Conference, 2013,
pp. 1–6, https://doi.org/10.1109/PTC.2013.6652366.
[13] A. Abart, B. Bletterie, M. Stifter, H. Brunner, D. Burnier, A. Lugmaier, A. Schenk, Power Snap-
Shot Analysis: a new method for analyzing low voltage grids using a smart metering system,
21st International Conference on Electricity Distribution, CIRED, Frankfurt, 2011.
[14] M. Stifter, B. Bletterie, D. Burnier, H. Brunner, A. Abart, Analysis environment for low voltage
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(SGMS), 2011, pp. 61–66, https://doi.org/10.1109/SGMS.2011.6089199.
[15] PostgreSQL Global Development Group, PostgreSQL, 2015.
[16] J. Dean, S. Ghemawat, MapReduce: simplified data processing on large clusters. Commun. ACM 51 (1) (2008) 107–113, https://doi.org/10.1145/1327452.1327492.
[17] R. Core Team, R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing, R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria, 2014.
[18] Teradata Aster, Teradata Aster—Aster Discovery Platform, 2016. http://www.teradata.com/
products-and-services/Teradata-Aster/teradata-aster-database (accessed 04.10.17).
[19] Teradata Aster, Aster Analytics Foundation User Guide, 2016. Version 6.20.
- Data-Driven Voltage Unbalance Analysis in Power Distribution Networks
- Chapter Points
- Introduction
- Problem Statement
- Unbalance in Low-Voltage Distribution Networks
- Utilized Voltage Band
- Data Acquisition and Storage
- Smart Meter Data Acquisition System
- Distributed Database Storage
- Distributed Data Processing
- Statistical Method
- Distributed Queries and Functions
- Data Discovery
- Distribution of Voltages
- Relation Between Meters With High Unbalance Events
- Timely Distribution of High Unbalance Events
- Relation Between Different Network States
- Maximum and Minimum Voltage: Voltage Spread
- Performance Evaluations
- Comparison Requirements
- Code
- Data
- Database
- System
- Evaluation Setup
- MapReduce Function CalcEventsLongFormat
- MapReduce Function MeterMinMax
- Conclusion
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-16---Predictive-Analytics-for-Comprehensi_2018_Big-Data-Application-.pdf
CHAPTER 16
Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
Yingchen Zhang*, Rui Yang*, Jie Zhang†, Yang Weng‡, Bri-Mathias Hodge* *National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, United States, †University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, United States, ‡Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States
OVERVIEW CHAPTER
Energy sustainability is a subject of concern to many nations in the modern world. It is critical for
electric power systems to diversify energy supply to include systems with different physical charac- teristics, such as wind energy, solar energy, electrochemical energy storage, thermal storage, bio-
energy systems, geothermal, and ocean energy. Each system has its own range of control variables
and targets. To be able to operate such a complex energy system, big-data analytics become critical to achieve the goal of predicting energy supplies and consumption patterns, assessing system opera-
tion conditions, and estimating system states—all providing situational awareness to power system
operators. This chapter presents data analytics and machine learning-based approaches to enable
predictive situational awareness of the power systems.
343
1 INTRODUCTION
Historically, the power system has been designed with dispatchable generation
providing enough electricity to meet demand and additional reserves to meet
contingencies. With the increase in wind and solar integration, better methods to forecast grid conditions will be needed to accommodate high penetrations
of these variable and uncertain clean energy technologies. Another challenge
with future grids is the ability to account for distributed energy resources (DER) that may not be under the operational control of the utility. Electricity
end users increasingly actively participate in power system operations by provid-
ing energy or demand services, such as distributed photovoltaic (PV) or demand response (DR). System operators need to dramatically enhance their capability in
monitoring, estimating, and predicting resource adequacy, demand fluctuations,
as well as system health to be able to address the ever-changing grid challenges.
New sensing and monitoring capabilities provide power system operators with
new opportunities to understand and predict the system conditions at all levels. At the transmission level, deployment of phasor measurement units (PMUs)
has provided new capabilities in most major interconnections. In distribution
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00016-4
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
NWP
Persistence
ARMA
ANN
SVM
Box-Jenkins
Kalman filter
Markov chain
Resource forecasting
Persistence
Regression
Kalman filter
ANN
Time series
Load forecasting
State estimation
SVR
Gaussian process
Measurements SCADA, PMU
Weighted least squares
PMU-based linear SE
Forecasting- aided SE
Predictive SE
Dynamic SE
PG PL
FIG. 1
Overview.
344 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
systems, smart meter-based advanced metering infrastructure has enabled two-
way communication between system operators and customers. The adoption of
solar and wind generators have created the need for power system operators to have better awareness of macro and microclimate conditions, such as irradi-
ance and wind speeds. Smart devices such as inverters and electrical vehicle
charging stations possess self-awareness and monitoring capabilities that can be used for centralized controls. When all of these new sensing technologies
are adopted in large numbers, it creates an enormous amount of data at finer
geographic and temporal scales than power system operators are used to han- dling. Therefore, big data analytics can play an increasingly important role in
the modern power system operations in terms of estimation and prediction
of comprehensive system conditions.
In this chapter, various methods to forecast the output of variable renewable
energy resources, such as wind and solar are first reviewed. Then, different load forecasting methods are discussed. Finally, how to estimate and forecast grid
states is explained. Fig. 1 gives an overview of the topics covered in this chapter.
2 RESOURCE FORECASTING
2.1 Renewable Forecasting
Renewable energy resources, particularly wind and solar energy, have become a
primary focus in government policies, academic research, and the power indus-
try. Among various renewables, wind energy is considered as one of the most
3452 Resource Forecasting
promising alternatives [1]. However, the variable and uncertain nature of the
renewable resources, such as wind and solar, may affect the economic and reli- able operations of the power system [2], especially with increasing penetration
levels of wind and solar power [3]. Therefore, it is important and desired to
improve the accuracy of the wind and solar forecasting that is used in power system scheduling.
2.2 Wind Forecasting 2.2.1 Wind Forecasting Overview Different wind forecasting models have been developed in the literature, and
they can be generally classified into three groups [4]: (i) physical models that are usually based on numerical weather prediction (NWP) models;
(ii) statistical methods, most of which are intelligent algorithms based on
data-driven approaches; and (iii) hybrid physical and statistical models.
NWP models simulate the physics of the atmosphere utilizing physical laws
and boundary conditions. There exist a variety of challenges when directly adopting NWP models for wind forecasting, such as the accuracy, spatial
and temporal resolutions, domain, and hierarchical importance of the physical
processes. Based on the domain coverage, the NWP models could be divided into limited area models (LAMs) and global models (GMs) [5]. Several GMs
[6–8] have been developed to fulfill different forecasting needs, such as the Global Forecast System (GFS) and the Integrated Forecast Model. LAMs nor- mally produce higher-resolution forecasts than GMs. Different LAMs have been
developed for forecasting in different domains. Some of these are the High-
Resolution Limited Area Model [9], ALADIN [10], the Fifth-Generation Meso- scale Model [11], and High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) [12].
Statistical models are trained using historical data and usually outperform
NWP models in very short-term forecasting (within 1-hour ahead) [13], par- tially due to the fact that NWP models normally take long time (e.g., hours)
to run. Both linear and nonlinear methods have been widely applied to wind
forecasting. Linear models, such as autoregressive moving average (ARMA) methods [14, 15], Box-Jenkins methods [16], Kalman filter [17], and Markov
Chain models [18, 19], are most widely used in the literature. Artificial neural
networks (ANN) and support vector machine (SVM) are the two most popular nonlinear methods for wind forecasting. Different ANN and SVM models have
been compared in many studies, and they performed inconsistently under dif- ferent conditions [20–22].
2.2.2 Big Data-Driven Wind Forecasting Much of the historical attention on wind and solar power forecasting has
focused on the day-ahead time frame due to the economic impacts of variable
renewables interacting with electricity markets and the unit commitment
346 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
process. Many of the new applications that require wind and solar power fore-
casting require more frequent updates and more granular forecasts. Big data- driven methods have been recently used to improve the accuracy of wind power
forecasting at different temporal and spatial scales [23–25].
Hours- to Day-Ahead NWP-Based Wind Forecasting The impact of atmospheric dynamics becomes more important for short-term
horizons from a few hours to day ahead, and NWP models often produce more accurate forecasts on these timescales. For example, the big data-driven Wind
Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP) was performed to improve short-term
wind power forecasts and determine the value of these improvements to grid operators [23]. WFIP encompassed two study regions: the northern study
region and the southern study region. The WFIP southern study region covers
most of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) service area, as shown in Fig. 2. The data from additional sensors deployed for the WFIP project, as
well as tower data from a set of participating wind power plants within Texas,
were assimilated into most of the ensemble members; however, the data from the project sensors were withheld from some ensemble members to gauge their
impact on the forecasts [23]. The existing wind forecasting system at ERCOT
used Mesoscale Atmospheric Simulations System model forecasts with initial
FIG. 2
WFIP southern study region in ERCOT [24].
Large scale model
Ensemble of rapid-update short-term NWP forecasts
Statistical adjustment procedure
Ensemble composite algorithm
Wind plant output model
Observations
Final forecast
FIG. 3
Overall framework of the wind power forecasting system [24].
3472 Resource Forecasting
conditions and boundary conditions from the GFS and the North American
Mesoscale Model. Ensemble methods have been shown to produce more accu-
rate forecasts. The WFIP forecast system consists of an ensemble of high- resolution rapid-update NWP models. Each of these ensemble members incor-
porates a variety of model configurations, physics parameterizations, and data
assimilation techniques. The purpose of integrating all of these ensemble mem- bers into one system is to construct an optimized composite forecast able to
predict forecast uncertainty and assess the relative performance of different
modeling approaches. Fig. 3 shows the overall framework of the wind power forecasting system. The WFIP ensemble members include [23, 24]:
(1) The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 3-km HRRR
model, updated hourly.
(2) Nine NWP models updated every 2 hours on a 5-km grid:
(a) Three configurations of the Advanced Regional Prediction System.
(b) Three configurations of the Weather Research and Forecasting
(WRF) model. (c) Three configurations of the Mesoscale Atmospheric Simulations
System.
(3) An Advanced Regional Prediction System model updated every 6 hours on a 2-km grid.
Minutes- to 2-Hour-Ahead Machine-Learning-Based Wind Forecasting Due to the nonlinear and nonstationary characteristics of wind speed, it is
challenging to develop a generic model based on a single machine learning
Wind speed
Wind direction
Neural network
Support vector machine
Random forest
Gradient boosting machine
First-layer forecasts
Ensemble algorithm
Final forecasts
Input vector Autocorrelation and partial
Autocorrelation analysis
Recursive feature elimination
Granger causality test
Principal component analysis
FIG. 4
The framework of the ensemble forecasting model [25].
348 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
algorithm that can produce the best forecasts at many different spatial and
temporal scales. Big data-driven methodologies could potentially improve
the accuracy of the wind forecasting. Fig. 4 illustrates a big data-driven multi- model wind forecasting methodology with deep feature selection methodol-
ogy [25]. First, features extracted from the data variables are determined by
a deep feature selection procedure and serve as inputs to the model. Four independent feature selection methods are included in the procedure and
implemented sequentially. The first-layer machine learning models are built
based on the selected feature combination. These models forecast wind speed or wind power as the output. A blending model is developed in the second
layer to combine the forecasts produced by different algorithms from the
first layer, and to generate both deterministic and probabilistic forecasts. Parameters of these models are optimally tuned by the grid search technique.
Machine learning algorithms have distinctive advantages. For instance, ANN
algorithms are adaptive by choosing different learning functions and loss
3492 Resource Forecasting
functions, but have overfitting issues when the training dataset is not long
enough. SVM is efficient to train and can provide relatively accurate results, but they are memory intensive and hard to tune. Tree ensemble algorithms
like random forests and gradient boosting machines can avoid overfitting
issues. The blending model is expected to integrate the advantages of differ- ent algorithms by canceling or smoothing the local forecasting errors.
2.2.3 Wind Forecasting Datasets The Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit was created through
the collaborative efforts of National Renewable Energy Laboratory and 3TIER and has been funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Energy Effi-
ciency and Renewable Energy, Wind and Water Power Technologies Office
[26, 27]. The WIND Toolkit supports the next generation of wind integration studies. The WIND Toolkit includes meteorological conditions and turbine
power for over 126,000 sites in the continental United States for the years
2007–13 (Fig. 5), which was produced with the WRF model version 3.4.1. The meteorological dataset has 2 � 2-km horizontal resolution, nine vertical levels, a temporal resolution of 5 minutes, and covers a 7-year period
(2007–13). The simulations include a spin-up period of 48 hours. The model
FIG. 5
Map showing the site density of the 126,692 wind sites [27].
350 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
was restarted every month, and we used scale selective grid nudging. There are
three main datasets included in the WIND Toolkit [27]:
(1) The meteorological dataset includes basic information on the weather conditions in each 2 � 2-km grid cell, for example, wind profiles, atmospheric stability, and solar radiation data.
(2) A power dataset was created using the wind data and site-appropriate turbine power curves to estimate the power produced at each of the
turbine sites.
(3) A forecast dataset includes forecasts for 1-, 4-, 6-, and 24-hour forecast horizons.
2.3 Solar Forecasting
Solar power penetration in the United States is growing rapidly, and the Sun-
Shot Vision Study reported that solar power could provide as much as 14% of
US electricity demand by 2030 and 27% by 2050 [28]. At these high levels of solar energy penetration, solar power forecasting will become very important
for electricity system operations. Solar forecasting is a challenging task, and
solar power generation presents different challenges for transmission and dis- tribution networks [29]. On the transmission side, solar power takes the form
of centralized solar power plants, a nondispatchable component of the gener-
ation pool. On the distribution side, solar power is generated by a large number of distributed arrays installed on building rooftops and other sites. These arrays
can alter traditional load patterns by offsetting electricity use behind the meter.
Integrating large amounts of solar power into the grid can magnify the impact of steep ramps in solar power output, which poses challenges to system oper-
ators’ ability to account for solar variability. Forecast inaccuracies of solar
power generation can result in substantial economic losses and power system reliability issues because electric grid operators must continuously balance sup-
ply and demand.
2.3.1 Solar Forecasting Overview Solar power output is directly proportional to the magnitude of solar irradiance
incident on PV panels. To integrate high penetrations of solar energy genera- tion, accurate solar forecasting is required at multiple spatial and temporal
scales. Solar irradiance variations are caused primarily by cloud movement,
cloud formation, and cloud dissipation. In the literature, researchers have developed a variety of big data-driven methods for solar power forecasting,
such as statistical approaches using historical data [30–32], the use of NWP models [33, 34], tracking cloud movements from satellite images [35], and tracking cloud movements from direct ground observations using sky cameras
[35, 36]. NWP models are the most popular method for forecasting solar
Table 1 Solar Forecasting Methodologies [38]
Methods Description/Comment Forecast Horizons
Physical approaches
NWP models NWP models are the most popular method for forecasting solar irradiance more than 6 hours or days in advance
4 hours to days ahead
Total Sky imagers (TSI) TSIs are used to extract cloud features or to forecast short-term GHI
0–30 minutes ahead
Statistical approaches
Statistical methods Statistical methods were developed based on autoregressive or artificial intelligence techniques for short-term forecasts
0–6 hours ahead
Persistence forecasts Persistence of cloudiness performs well for very short-term forecasts
<4 hours ahead
3512 Resource Forecasting
irradiance several hours or days in advance. Mathiesen and Kleissl [34] ana-
lyzed the global horizontal irradiance (GHI) in the continental United States forecasted by three popular NWP models: the North American Model, the
GFS, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Lorenz
et al. [37] showed that cloud movement-based forecasts likely provide better results than NWP forecasts for forecast timescales of 4 hours or less; beyond
that, NWP models tend to perform better. In summary, forecasting methods
can be broadly characterized as physical or statistical. The physical approach uses NWP and PV models to generate solar power forecasts, whereas the statis-
tical approach relies primarily on historical data to train models [38]. Recent
solar forecasting studies [39, 40] integrated these two approaches by using both physical and historical data as inputs to train statistical models. These solar
forecasting methods are summarized in Table 1.
2.3.2 Big Data-Driven Solar Forecasting
Hours- to Day-Ahead NWP-Based Solar Forecasting As part of the project work performed under the SunShot Initiative’s Improv-
ing the Accuracy of Solar Forecasting program, a system for improving solar
forecast, Watt-sun, has been developed. Watt-sun uses big-data information processing technologies and applies machine-learnt, situation-dependent
blending of multiple models to enhance system intelligence, adaptability,
and scalability. The algorithm which provides the best accuracy for the last 2 days is selected for future solar power forecasts. Numerical results show
30% improvement in solar irradiance/power forecast accuracy compared with
forecasts based on the best individual method, and 10% improvement com- pared with model forecasts processed by machine learning methods without
situation categorization. Detailed information about the Watt-sun forecast
method can be found in [40, 41].
352 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
Minutes- to 2-Hour-Ahead Sky Imaging-Based Solar Forecasting Fig. 6 shows a short-term 1-hour-ahead GHI classification forecasting frame-
work [42]. In addition to pattern recognition, the framework contains two other parts: the data preprocessing module and the GHI forecasting module.
In the data preprocessing module, a three-step technique is applied to improve
the pattern recognition and forecasting performance. The forecasting module is divided into three model sets: Model Set I (MSI), Model Set II (MSII), and
Model Set III (MSIII). The first two sets of models forecast GHI for the first 4 day-
light hours of each day. Then the GHI values in the remaining hours are fore- casted by an optimal machine learning model determined based on a weather
pattern classification model in the third model set. The weather pattern is deter- mined by an SVM classifier.
2.4 Renewable Forecasting Performance Evaluation Metrics
A suite of generally applicable, value-based, and custom-designed metrics for renewable forecasting considering different time horizons, geographic loca-
tions, and applications was developed by Zhang et al. [29]. The developed
renewable forecasting metrics can be broadly divided into four categories: (1) statistical metrics for different time and geographic scales, (2) uncertainty
quantification and propagation metrics, (3) ramp characterization metrics, and
(4) economic metrics. A brief description of the metrics is given in Table 2, and detailed information about each metric can be found in [29, 43]. A smaller
value indicates a better forecast for most of the metrics, except for Pearson’s cor-
relation coefficient, skewness, kurtosis, distribution of forecast errors, and ramp characterization metrics.
G1
G3
G21
G22
G23
D a ta
g ro
u p 2
D a ta
g ro
u p 1
D a
ta g
ro u
p 3
SVM classification
model
Pattern recognition
GHI forecasts
Location information
Sky images
Actual GHI
Normalization
Reconstruction
Elimination
M o d e l S
e t II
MS 21
MS 22
MS 23
M o d e l S
e t II I
MS 31
MS 32
MS 33
1-day-ahead persistence
model
M o d e l S
e t I
ForecastingFeature extraction and data preprocessing
FIG. 6
Overall framework of the short-term GHI forecasting based on sky imaging and pattern recognition [42].
Table 2 Metrics for Renewable Energy Forecasting [29]
Type Metric Description/Comment
Statistical metrics
Distribution of forecast errors Provides a visualization of the full range of forecast errors and variability of solar forecasts at multiple temporal and spatial scales
Pearson’s correlation coefficient Linear correlation between forecasted and actual wind/solar power
Root mean square error (RMSE) and normalized root mean square error (NRMSE)
Suitable for evaluating the overall accuracy of the forecasts while penalizing large forecast errors in a square order
Maximum absolute error (MaxAE) Suitable for evaluating the largest forecast error
Mean absolute error (MAE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE)
Suitable for evaluating uniform forecast errors
Mean bias error (MBE) Suitable for assessing forecast bias
Kolmogorov-Smirnov test integral (KSI) or KSIPer
Evaluates the statistical similarity between the forecasted and actual wind/solar power
OVER or OVERPer Characterizes the statistical similarity between the forecasted and actual wind/solar power on large forecast errors
Skewness Measures the asymmetry of the distribution of forecast errors; a positive (or negative) skewness leads to an over-forecasting (or under-forecasting) tail
Excess kurtosis Measures the magnitude of the peak of the distribution of forecast errors; a positive (or negative) kurtosis value indicates a peaked (or flat) distribution, greater than or less than that of the normal distribution
Uncertainty quantification metrics
R�enyi entropy Quantifies the uncertainty of a forecast; it can utilize all of the information present in the forecast error distributions
Standard deviation Quantifies the uncertainty of a forecast
Ramp characterization metrics
Swinging door algorithm Extracts ramps in wind/solar power output by identifying the start and end points of each ramp
Economic metrics 95th percentile of forecast errors Represents the amount of nonspinning reserves service held to compensate for wind/solar power forecast errors
3533 User Energy System State Estimation
3 USER ENERGY SYSTEM STATE ESTIMATION
3.1 Overview
Power system load forecasting has its use in planning as well as system opera- tions. Better load forecasting can result in reduced operational costs and
improved system reliability. Normally, system operators pay more attention
to the aggregated load at a distribution substation, which could contain many distribution feeders because the load and generation are physically separated in
354 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
the confidential hierarchy grid. With the increased DER penetration, the distri-
bution level load forecasting has gained more attraction. The distribution level load forecasting faces more challenge because it contains more stochastically
abrupt deviations. Further, the load itself can become resource when providing
DR, the needs to estimate the DR capability at future time are critical for both operators and DR providers to better schedule the service. This section will
introduce the data-driven load forecasting as well as DR forecasting using user
energy system state estimation.
3.2 Load Forecasting
The load forecasting time horizon can be divided into short term, medium term,
and long term. Short-term load forecasting (STLF) usually predicts the electricity demand from 1 hour to 1 week ahead and is used to facilitate the day-ahead and
real-time resource scheduling in power systems [44]. The term “very short-term
load forecasting” is also used, which focuses on demand forecasts less than 1 hour ahead [45, 46]. Medium-term load forecasting (MTLF) is usually from
1 week to 1 year ahead and is used for maintenance scheduling as well as con-
tract negotiation in energy markets [47]. Long-term load forecasting (LTLF), which covers a time period of more than 1 year, is mainly used for expansion
planning of power grids in order to accommodate future demand [47].
Many models and methods have been developed for load forecasting. The most commonly used methods for MTLF and LTLF are the end-user approach, which
takes into account the end-user behaviors [48]; and the econometric approach,
which studies the relationship between energy consumption and other factors, such as weather conditions and economic factors [47]. During the past decades,
research efforts have been focused on STLF, since it plays an essential role in
power system operation. Various approaches have been applied to STLF, including time-series methods [49, 50], regression-based methods [51, 52],
and artificial intelligence-based methods [53–55].
An overview of the most commonly used STLF models and approaches is pro-
vided in the following. More comprehensive reviews of load forecasting
methods, especially STLF methods, can be found in [47, 56, 57].
3.2.1 Conventional Methods Conventional STLF approaches adopt statistical methods to model the relation-
ship between demand and external factors that may influence demand. A variety
of models have been used for load forecasting, including persistence method, time-series methods, regression analysis, and Kalman filtering-based methods.
Persistence model uses the previous day (or the corresponding day in the previous week) as a prediction. Such a method is sensitive to the rare events
(e.g., the day in the last week is the Thanksgiving Eve day).
3553 User Energy System State Estimation
Time-series approaches model electricity demand as a time-varying random
process and use historical data to predict future demand by exploiting the inter- nal pattern of the time-series data. The most often used time-series methods
include ARMA [58], autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) [50],
ARMA with exogenous variables (ARMAX) [59, 60], and autoregressive inte- grated moving average with exogenous variables (ARIMAX) [47]. These
methods model future demand as a function of historical values of load
consumption and other factors, such as time and weather.
Regression analysis is employed to model the relationship between electricity
demand and external factors, such as weather, the hour of the day, and cus- tomer type. Multiple regression techniques have been applied to load forecast-
ing, including linear regression [51], nonparametric regression [61], and robust
regression [62].
State-space models have also been used to model the time-varying load, and
Kalman filtering-based algorithms are adopted to provide a recursive update of the load in the near future [63, 64].
Since the actual relationship between the load and influencing factors is non-
linear and complex, the major challenge of using the aforementioned methods for load forecasting is how to develop an accurate model to represent electricity
demand.
3.2.2 Artificial Intelligence-Based Methods In recent years, artificial intelligence-based methods, such as ANNs and support
vector regression (SVR), have been applied to better model the complex rela- tionship between electricity demand and other factors and thereby better fore-
cast future demand.
ANNs are composed of a number of neurons, each of which has an activation
function converting its input to output. The neurons are interconnected to form
a multilayer network, which is used to define the relationship between the input variables and output variables. In load forecasting, ANN models are
trained to find the mapping between the load and influencing factors using his-
torical data. The mapping function is then used to forecast the future load [53, 65]. An extensive review of neural network methods for STLF is given in [66].
The SVR method uses a nonlinear mapping function to transform the input
data into a high-dimensional feature space, and then a linear regression is per- formed in this high-dimensional space [67].
Both the ANN and SVR methods have the capability to use nonlinear models to map the input and output variables and better capture the complex relationship
between the load and other influencing factors. A detailed review of various
356 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
computational intelligence techniques for STLF is provided in [68], including
ANN, SVR, and other artificial intelligence-based methods.
Moreover, hybrid approaches are also common in load forecasting, which com-
bines two or more aforementioned methods in order to achieve better forecast- ing accuracy [69–71].
3.2.3 Gaussian Process-Based Method Most load forecasting methods predict the electricity demand at the aggregated
level. For forecasting the demand of individual customers, different models will
be needed for different customers since each may behave differently. Therefore, there is a need for accurate and personalized demand forecasting algorithms for
individual customers.
In the following, a Gaussian process-based load forecasting algorithm is intro- duced. The Gaussian process-based method is highly flexible, since it can easily
incorporate different existing regression-based methods. Therefore, it can pro-
vide a personalized demand forecasting algorithm for each individual customer by incorporating the suitable model for the customer’s behaviors.
To visualize the distribution of load data, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and OhmConnect data are analyzed for a proper statistical model.
Fig. 7A and B show the distributions of two normalized loads at two different
time stamps. The dashed lines are the fitted Gaussian distributions to the data. Fig. 7C shows the joint distribution of the same load in two time indices of a
day. Together with these three figures, the data analysis shows that the loads at
different time slots can be modeled as a multivariate Gaussian distribution. In order to check the Gaussianity rigorously, the K-squared test [72] and the
Jarque-Bera test [73] can be conducted.
Here, the data before the demand forecasting period of a particular day are
defined as a vector x of C elements, which may include features such as load,
temperature [74], and day of the week. Without loss of generality, the case when the target demand forecasting is a scalar y is considered. An underlying
function y(x) is inferred from a training set T ¼ fðxi,yiÞji ¼ 1,…,ng, where i is the historical day index and n is the total number of days in the training data- set. For compact notation, all input data are combined in a C � n matrix X, and the target variables in a vector y. Therefore, the training set can be written as
T ¼ ðX,yÞ. Similarly, {(X*, y*)} denotes the testing data, where X* is known, and y* is unknown.
The joint distribution of the training and testing data is:
y
y ∗
! ¼
mðXÞ mðX∗Þ
" # ,
CðX,XÞ, CðX,X∗Þ CðX∗ ,XÞ, CðX∗,X∗Þ
" # !
(A) (B)
(C)
FIG. 7
Gaussianity of residential customers’ loads at different time indices. (A) Histogram of normalized load distribution at one time index.
(B) Histogram of normalized load distribution at another time index. (C) Joint load distribution of the two time indices.
3573 User Energy System State Estimation
Therefore, a Gaussian process is specified by a mean, m(�), and a covariance
function, C(�, �). The mean estimate under the Gaussian process framework is:
y ∗ ¼ mðX∗Þ + CðX∗,XÞCðX,XÞ�1ðy �mðXÞÞ (1)
And the covariance estimate is:
Covðy∗Þ ¼ KðX∗,X∗ Þ�KðX∗,XÞ � ½CðX,XÞ + λI��1CðX,X∗Þ (2)
where λ is a hyperparameter.
After setting up the framework, data can be used to design the covariance
functions.
• Embedding distance-based correlation: A future load equals the
summation of a past load and the change between them. This leads to a stronger correlation of load values between two time slots closer to each
other. As shown in Fig. 8, the correlation decreases from a 1-hour interval
to an 11-hour interval for the PG&E dataset and OhmConnect dataset.
FIG. 8
Autocorrelation with different intervals. The x-coordinate represents load at time t. The y-coordinate
represents load at time t + t0, where t0 is the time interval between loads at two indices.
358 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
Therefore, a squared exponential covariance is employed based on Euclidean distance.
• Embedding periodic pattern: From Fig. 8, the correlation increases again
to a 24-hour interval, indicating a daily periodic pattern. As different residential customers may have different periodicities with different
weights, periodic patterns are automatically detected and embedded into
the covariance function. • Embedding piecewise linear pattern in temperature: As loads are usually
sensitive to temperature, the temperature is also used in the covariance
function.
Fig. 9 shows the simulations of the Gaussian process-based method with the
PG&E dataset with different training and testing lengths.
• Use 2 weeks of hourly load as a training set to forecast 1 week of hourly load.
• Use 4 weeks of hourly load as a training set to forecast 1 week of
hourly load. • Use 1 week of hourly load as a training set to forecast 4 weeks of
hourly load.
As shown in Fig. 9, the mean estimate learns features of periodicity and tem-
perature, and the 95% confidence zone covers true values for the week in
the forecast. This happens even when the training set length is very short. It gives both highly confident mean estimates and trends of the uncertainty.
In addition to the load domain analysis in Fig. 9, the results for the error domain analysis of three different methods are shown in Fig. 10 for all users
in the PG&E data. These methods include a moving average model, a regression
Time (h) Time (h)
Time (h)
0
H o u rl y
lo a d
100 200 300 400 500 900600 700 800
True value Gaussian proc. 95% CI for GP
(B)
0
H o u rl y
lo a d
100 200 300 400 500 900600 700 800
True value Gaussian proc. 95% CI for GP
(C)
0 0
5
10
15
20
25
0
5
10
15
20
25
0
5
H o u rl y
lo a d
10
15
20
True value Gaussian proc. 95% CI for GP
25
100 200 300 400 500 600
(A)
FIG. 9
Estimation comparisons with different training set lengths and different forecasting time horizons. (A) 2 weeks training, 1 week testing.
(B) 4 weeks training, 1 week testing. (C) 1 week training, 4 weeks testing.
3593 User Energy System State Estimation
model taking into account the time of week and the temperature, and the Gaussian process-based method.
As shown in Fig. 10, the Gaussian process-based approach has the smallest error, no matter how long the forecasting is. Especially for very long-time
horizons—up to 17 weeks—the Gaussian process-based method is much more
robust than the other two methods.
Comparing to other load forecasting methods, the Gaussian process-based
method has a mean estimate that is equivalent or better than the estimates gen-
erated by currently used baseline estimation methods. Also, Gaussian process- based method naturally provides the prediction of uncertainties inherent in the
customer loads while deterministic method does not provide such functional-
ity. Finally, the accuracy and the ability for providing confidence intervals are enhanced by Gaussian process-based method’s flexibility of an adaptive com-
ponent design according to customer behaviors.
2 0
M A
P E
10
20
30
40
50
60
Average Regression Gaussian proc.
70
80
90
3 5 9
Forecast range
17 weeks
FIG. 10
Error domain analysis.
360 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
3.3 User Energy System State Estimation: Demand Response
Electricity consumers are becoming active resources in terms of providing DR. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission defines DR as electric usage adjust-
ments by the consumers from their normal consumption patterns [75, 76]. Such adjustments are in response to (1) changes in the price of electricity over
time, or (2) incentive payments designed to induce lower electricity consump-
tion at usage peaks or when system reliability is jeopardized [77]. Different than load forecasting, DR capability of certain user energy systems can be estimated
through the baseline evaluation.
TraditionalDRprogramsareusuallydesignedforlargecommercialcustomers,as their usage is predictable. Therefore, the deterministic baseline evaluation can be
used for the electricity consumption estimation based on the no-DR period [78,
79]. The difference between an estimated normal consumption and the actual usage is subsequently used to calculate the savings as shown in Fig. 11 [80–82].
Deterministic methods such as simple load average and temperature-based linear regression are used for commercial customers with satisfactory results
[74, 83, 84]. For example, DR programs had great success with large power
consumption users [85]. GreenTech Media reported in 2013 that 8.7 million in revenue had been generated within 7 months in the PJM Interconnection
by conducting DR in system operation with mostly large customers, reducing
the use of 80 traditional coal power plants in peak power supply [85].
0 Time
Actually did
If no signal
E n
e rg
y co
n su
m p
tio n
FIG. 11
Deterministic baseline estimation and its rewarding mechanism.
3614 Power System State Estimation
Although large customers currently create a significant portion of the revenue in the DR programs, the smaller residential consumers hold the key to potential
growth in the DR customer number and the DR revenue. For example, 9.3
million customers had participated in DR programs by March 2016 in the United States, but more than 90% of them are in the residential sector [86].
In addition to making profits, DR at the residential level is becoming an attrac-
tive solution for the radically increased renewable generation to balance local power flow [87].
The drawback to traditional baseline estimation methods lies in their failure to utilize the historical data to capture the dynamics of complex user behaviors
[84, 88], which is of particular importance for small to medium consumers
with more variability [89]. One can also use the idea of control groups [90–92]; however, it may be hard to uniquely define the best control group that properly captures the uncertainty in user behavior of the treatment group
(enrolled customers). As large utility companies have started to make historical data available to approved third parties (e.g., the Green Button initiative in Cal-
ifornia [93]) machine learning-based techniques can be used to capture the
uncertainty at the consumer level. Similar to the content in load forecasting, Gaussian process regression can be used for DR as well. After which, automatic
feature extractions can be employed to dynamically embed consumer behav-
iors into the mean and variance estimates.
4 POWER SYSTEM STATE ESTIMATION
4.1 Overview
Power system state estimation was developed decades ago and now forms the backbone of all control center applications. Operators collect thousands of
measurements from meters and relays through supervisory control and data
362 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
acquisition (SCADA) systems to solve for the system states, namely voltage
magnitude and angle at all buses. With the fully solved system state variables, the power flow of the system can be calculated. The SCADA system can be seen
as an early “big data” resource in power system. With the addition of PMUs,
system state variables at many locations can be directly monitored. Advanced state estimation techniques have been developed and implemented for a better
awareness of grid state conditions.
4.2 Conventional Nonlinear State Estimation
Power system state estimation aims to find the system state at a point in time
(i.e., voltage magnitudes and phase angles) based on a set of measurements. Conventional static estimation uses the measurements, which are taken at
one snapshot in time to estimate the corresponding system states of this time
instance.
Let x ¼ ½θ2,θ3,…,θn,jV1j,jV2j,…,jVnj�T denote the vector of system states includ- ing the voltage magnitude and the phase angle at every bus except the phase angle at the reference bus 1 is set to be θ1 ¼ 0. Let z ¼ [z1, z2, …, zm]T represent the vector of collected measurements including the active and reactive power
injections at buses, power flows in the network, and voltage magnitudes. The relationship between the collected measurements and the system states
can be written as:
z ¼ hðxÞ + ω (3)
where h ¼ [h1(x), h2(x), …, hm(x)]T is the vector of nonlinear functions map- ping the states to measurements and ω ¼ [ω1, ω2, …, ωm]T is the measurement noise vector. Usually, the measurement noises are assumed to be independent Gaussian random variables with zero mean and variance σ2i (i.e., ω � N ð0,ΣÞ), where the covariance matrix Σ is a diagonal matrix with the ith diagonal ele- ment as σ2i . In practice, the measurement set is redundant, resulting in an over- determined nonlinear equation system (3).
The goal of state estimation is to find an estimate x̂ of the true state x given the measurement set z. The most widely used approach for static state estimation is
the weighted least squares (WLS) method. The best estimate of system states is
found by:
x̂ ¼ arg min x
JðxÞ ¼ arg min x
z�hðxÞð ÞTΣ�1 z�hðxÞð Þ (4)
Since the optimization problem is a nonlinear least squares problem, the
Gauss-Newton method is used to find the best estimate in an iterative manner. At iteration k, the estimated state vector xk is updated using [94]:
3634 Power System State Estimation
xk + 1 ¼ xk + Δxk (5)
GðxkÞΔxk ¼ HTðxkÞΣ�1 z�hðxkÞ � �
(6)
GðxkÞ ¼ HTðxkÞΣ�1HðxkÞ (7)
where Δxk is the update on the estimated system state at iteration k, and H(xk) is the Jacobian matrix of the vector function h(x) evaluated at xk as:
HðxkÞ ¼ ∂hðxÞ ∂x
����x¼xk (8) The matrix G(x) is the gain matrix, and Eq. (6) is referred to as the normal equa-
tion of the WLS algorithm.
The iterative procedure is terminated when the mismatch between the calcu-
lated measurement values using the system states and the actual measurement
values is below a predetermined threshold.
4.3 PMU Data-Based Linear State Estimation and Dynamic State Estimation
With the broad development of PMUs in power systems to directly measure the
system states, state estimation problems have naturally expanded to include
PMU measurements. Several new techniques of state estimation have been developed to better understand grid conditions under all circumstances.
Among them, linear state estimation [95] and dynamic state estimation [96] have seen broader development.
Because of the simultaneous collection of measurements across the system
through PMUs, the linear model of the system can be constructed and solved [95]. The synchrophasor-based linear state estimation problem considers no
correlation between adjacent states.
z ¼ V
Iflow
� � ¼
II
yA + ys
� � x + e (9)
where z is the measurement vector vertically concatenated voltage and current measurements and x is the complex state vector. The II matrix is an incidence
matrix which identically relates the state vector to voltage measurements. The
admittance matrix relates the state vector to current measurements.
Assume PMU measurement is available at two adjacent nodes, the linear equa-
tion can be solved as
364 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
Vi
Vj
Iij Iji
2 6664
3 7775¼
1 0
0 1
yij + yi0 �yij �yij yij + yi0
2 6664
3 7775 �
Vi
Vj
� � (10)
Another important feature of the PMU measurements is that they can capture the
electromechanical dynamics of the power system [96]. Therefore, dynamic state
estimation was developed to use PMU measurements to derive the dynamic states of the power system, such as the generator speed. The system dynamic model can
be generally represented by a set of differential and algebraic questions:
dxðtÞ dt
¼ f xðtÞ,yðtÞ,tð Þ (11)
0 ¼ g xðtÞ,yðtÞ,tð Þ (12)
where x and y are the dynamic and algebraic states of the system. A set of PMU
measurements z can be directly related to the system states and measurement
error by:
z ¼ h xðtÞ,yðtÞ,tð Þ + η (13)
A standard least square estimation is then performed to minimize the measure- ment error compared with the system dynamic model outputs, deriving a
dynamic state estimation.
It is also worth mentioning that a linear state estimator can be used for system dynamic state estimation. The system dynamic models are constructed the
same way, but instead of least square solutions, robust linear models (least absolute value)-based solutions can be derived [97].
4.4 Predictive State Estimation 4.4.1 Forecasting-Aided State Estimation Unlike conventional power system state estimation which estimates the system states at a certain time sample based on measurements taken at this snapshot,
forecasting-aided state estimation provides a recursive update of the state esti-
mate by taking into account the state transition over time. Mathematical models [98] describing the state trajectory have been employed to forecast
the system states in the near future, resulting in a priori state estimate. With
the newly received measurement data, the forecast system states are once again refined, rendering a more accurate state estimate. By incorporating short-term
state forecasting, the performance of the state estimation can be improved,
especially in dealing with missing measurements.
Most existing forecasting-aided state estimation approaches are based on the
Kalman filter [98, 99]. Machine learning algorithms, such as ANNs, have also
3654 Power System State Estimation
been used to provide state forecasting and thereby aid the state estimation
[100–102]. A more comprehensive review of forecasting-aided state estimation is given in [103].
4.4.2 Predictive State Estimation With the increasing penetration of renewable energy resources, the system
states become more variable and unpredictable. Besides individual forecasting
for variable resources and loads, state forecasting can greatly help operators proactively operate the systems and reduce the operation cost [104]. This sec-
tion introduces a fast and high-accurate system state forecasting approach
based on historical data and a machine learning algorithm.
The historical system states from measurements such as PMUs are the training
data for the state forecaster. An extreme learning machine (ELM)-based algo-
rithm is used to forecast the future system states for the distribution system [105]. In the ELM algorithm, the input weights and biases are randomly gen-
erated, and the output weights are computed. This means the computational burden of calculating input weights and biases can be eliminated.
As shown in Fig. 12, the ELM-based system state estimator is designed as fol-
lows. In the training part, M observations are collected, and the observation set {α, γ} can be built as follows:
Input layer Hidden layer Output layer
FIG. 12
Concept of the ELM method.
366 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
α ¼
sð1Þ sð2Þ ⋯ sðmÞ sð2Þ sð3Þ ⋯ sðm + 1Þ ⋯ ⋯ ⋯ ⋯
sðM�mÞ sðM�m + 1Þ ⋯ sðM�1Þ
0 BBBB@
1 CCCCA (14)
and
γ ¼
sðm + 1Þ sðm + 2Þ
⋯ sðMÞ
0 BBBB@
1 CCCCA (15)
where s( j) is the jth observation, α is the input matrix, and γ is the output vector. Consider an ELM algorithm with K neurons in the hidden layer. The activation function ψ used to model the data observation set {α, γ} can be written as:
XK k¼1
ψkðξk,bk,αiÞβk ¼ Ψi (16)
where i ¼ 1, 2, …, M � m, k ¼ 1, 2, 3, …, K. ξk is the input weight vector con- necting the input α and the kth hidden neuron, βk is the output weight connect- ing the kth hidden neuron and output Ψ, and bk is the bias of the kth hidden neuron. The objective is to minimize the errors between the output of the acti-
vation function Ψ and γ. The objective function is as follows:
min β
J ¼ XM�m i¼1
Ψi �γi½ � 2
(17)
where the optimization variable set is β ¼ {β1, …, βK}. ξ ¼ {ξ1, …, ξK} and b ¼ {b1, …, bK} are randomly generated at the first iteration. Subsequently, the ELM can be used to forecast future system states with the optimized parameters.
The IEEE 123-bus distribution system is shown as a test example to illustrate the
behavior. A set of load data from a real utility SCADA system is used for evalu- ating the ELM-based state forecasting approach. As shown in Fig. 13, the sample
rate is 1 Hz, and the time period is 12 days, with a total data length of 1,036,800 points. There are a lot of abrupt stochastic deviations in the load profile of the
distribution system, as shown in Fig. 13, which can differ greatly from the trans-
mission system. In the numerical results, bus 47, 49, 68, 76, and 83 are chosen with the load profile in Fig. 13. Then the system states are computed to evaluate.
The training data are five times the testing data. To evaluate the ELM-based fore-
casting method comprehensively, the sliding window test is used to traverse the whole system state data. For example, the sliding window test employed with
1-hour-ahead forecasting can be illustrated as follows.
0 3 6 9 12
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5 × 102
Time (day)
L o a d (
kW )
FIG. 13
Load profile of IEEE 123-bus distribution system.
3674 Power System State Estimation
1. First, the system state data section from the first to the fifth hours is taken
as training data to determine the best parameters and build the
forecasting model. 2. In the second step, the system state data section from the fifth to the sixth
hours is taken as the test data to evaluate the performance of the
forecasting model. 3. In the third step, for the next round forecasting, the training data section
moves forward from the second to the sixth hours, and the test data
section moves from the sixth to the seventh hours. 4. When the test data section moves to the end of the load data, the sliding
window test with 1-hour forecasting is completed.
Short-term system state forecasting is studied at an hourly level in the literature
[106, 107]. The performance of the ELM-based state forecasting method at dif-
ferent time scales is shown in Table 3. Using the ELM-based state forecasting method, the 1 hour-ahead has the best performance and the 16 hour-ahead
forecasting has the largest forecasting errors. However, the MAPEs of voltage
forecasting are below 2.00%, with an average of 1.370%. The MAPEs of angle forecasting are below 2.50%, with an average of 1.872%.
Table 3 Performance of the ELM approach
Forecasting Type Voltage (%) Angle (%)
1 hour ahead 1.131 1.578
2 hours ahead 1.182 1.628
4 hours ahead 1.289 1.752
8 hours ahead 1.474 1.975
16 hours ahead 1.775 2.431
−10 −5 −1.5 0 1.5 5 10 15 0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
−15 Prediction error (%)
75.17%
D e
n si
ty (
% )
FIG. 14
Percent error of 8-hour-ahead forecasting using ELM: voltage magnitude.
368 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
As shown in Fig. 14, in the histogram of voltage forecasting error, it is noticed
that more than 75% of the errors are accumulated between (�1.5%, 1.5%). Similarly, as shown in Fig. 15, in the histogram of voltage forecasting error, it is noticed that more than 75% of the errors are accumulated between
(�2.3%, 2.3%). Hence, in most of the time, the ELM-based approach can fore- cast the system states with very high accuracy. In some rare cases, the forecasting errors for voltage magnitudes and angles are larger than �10%. However, the cases with forecasting errors larger than �10% are below 1% for both the volt- age magnitudes and angles. The center of the voltage and angle forecasting error is 0, which indicates that the ELM-based approach performs accurately and is
unbiased.
−20 −15 −10 −5 −2.3 0 2.3 5 10 15 20 0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
75.15%
Prediction error (%)
D e n si
ty (
% )
FIG. 15
Percent error of 8-hour-ahead forecasting using ELM: voltage angle.
Table 4 Comparison With Different Forecasting Approaches
ANN ARIMA GA-SVR Proposed Approach
MAPE (%) 1.702 9.972 3.146 1.725
Time (seconds) 897.2 25.7 767.3 17.1
3694 Power System State Estimation
To compare the performance of the ELM forecasters with the most common
ones in [108–111], the 8-hour-ahead forecasting is chosen as an example. The MAPE and time consumption are the average of voltage and angle forecast-
ing. As shown in Table 4, the ANN has the best accuracy performance in MAPE
comparison; however, it takes more than 40 times longer than the ELM approach. Furthermore, the accuracy of ANN is very close to the ELM approach.
Compared to the other approaches, the ELM approach has the best balance
between forecasting accuracy and time consumption. Overall, machine learn- ing methods demonstrate potential of accurately forecasting the power system
states.
4.5 Distribution System State Estimation
The distribution grid has been undergoing a dramatic transformation in recent years. The penetration level of DERs such as PV systems keeps increasing and
the electricity consumers have become active players because of their capabil-
ities of performing demand side management. The distribution system becomes more complex while more resources are available to provide control-
lability and flexibility at the same time. These changes impose great challenges
as well as opportunities on distribution system operations. Distribution system operators are in need of advanced energy monitoring and management systems
in order to properly monitor the system states and determine the appropriate control actions of available resources. Therefore, distribution system state esti-
mation plays an important role in the distribution system management as it
provides full visibility into a distribution system by estimating the voltage mag- nitude and phase angle at each system bus, as well as the power flow on each
distribution circuit branch, and thereby initial input to various control
functions.
Even though most of the existing distribution state estimation algorithms
inherit the paradigm of transmission-level state estimation [112, 113], distribu-
tion system state estimation has its unique features and challenges [114–116].
First, unlike the transmission system having redundant measurements, there
exist a limited number of measurement devices in the distribution system, resulting in the distribution system not being fully observable. Pseudo-
measurements, usually the load power consumption obtained from historical
370 CHAPTER 16: Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
data, can be used for the distribution system state estimation. However, the
accuracy of these pseudo-measurements may be limited.
Second, different models and algorithms are needed for the distribution system
state estimation. Distribution systems are naturally unbalanced due to the dif- ferent system configurations as well as unbalanced parameters and loads. Con-
sequently, three-phase modeling of the distribution system state estimation
problem is needed in order to accurately estimate the system states. Further- more, the low reactance/resistance (X/R) ratios render the commonly used
decoupled WLS algorithm for the transmission system state estimation not suit-
able for the distribution system.
Finally, as the distribution system is more often a radial or weakly meshed grid,
branch currents can be used as possible primary state variables instead of nodal
voltages, which may simplify the formulation of the distribution system state estimation problem.
With the deployment of more and more measurement devices in the distribu- tion system, such as smart meters, synchrophasors, and distribution sensors,
models and methods will be needed to facilitate the accurate estimation of dis-
tribution system states by utilizing the available measurement data, which is crucial for the implementation of distribution system state estimation.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Large volumes of heterogeneous data have been made available for power sys- tem coupled energy systems, from the variable generation resource measure-
ments, smart homes and buildings measurements, to high-resolution and
dynamic grid measurements. Data analytics are becoming more important and effective for power system operators, end users, generation operators,
and aggregators, to manage the grid and its assets in real time and even in a
look-ahead mode. This chapter presented data-driven applications for energy resource forecasting, energy consumption forecasting, as well as power system
state estimation and forecasting. Together, they will provide system operators with advanced awareness of system future conditions. Operators can then pro-
actively dispatch generators, schedule power flows and reactive power support,
preconfigure system topology, or preprocure ancillary services. Eventually, the capability of data analytics can enable a predictive operation paradigm of the
power systems in the future.
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- Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy Systems State Estimation
- Introduction
- Resource Forecasting
- Renewable Forecasting
- Wind Forecasting
- Wind Forecasting Overview
- Big Data-Driven Wind Forecasting
- Hours- to Day-Ahead NWP-Based Wind Forecasting
- Minutes- to 2-Hour-Ahead Machine-Learning-Based Wind Forecasting
- Wind Forecasting Datasets
- Solar Forecasting
- Solar Forecasting Overview
- Big Data-Driven Solar Forecasting
- Hours- to Day-Ahead NWP-Based Solar Forecasting
- Minutes- to 2-Hour-Ahead Sky Imaging-Based Solar Forecasting
- Renewable Forecasting Performance Evaluation Metrics
- User Energy System State Estimation
- Overview
- Load Forecasting
- Conventional Methods
- Artificial Intelligence-Based Methods
- Gaussian Process-Based Method
- User Energy System State Estimation: Demand Response
- Power System State Estimation
- Overview
- Conventional Nonlinear State Estimation
- PMU Data-Based Linear State Estimation and Dynamic State Estimation
- Predictive State Estimation
- Forecasting-Aided State Estimation
- Predictive State Estimation
- Distribution System State Estimation
- Conclusions
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-17---Data-Analytics-for-Energy-Disaggreg_2018_Big-Data-Application-i.pdf
CHAPTER 17
Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
Behzad Najafi, Sadaf Moaveninejad, Fabio Rinaldi Polytechnic University of Milan, Milan, Italy
377
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Energy disaggregation, or nonintrusive load monitoring (NILM), aims at estimating the power
demand of individual appliances from a household’s aggregate electricity consumption. Due to the notable rise in the number of installed smart meters and owing to the numerous advantages
of this approach over intrusive methods, NILM has received growing attention in the recent years.
In this chapter, after reviewing different categories of household appliances, the state-of-the-art load
signatures, including both macroscopic and microscopic features, are introduced. Next, commonly used supervised and unsupervised disaggregation algorithms, which are employed to classify the
appliances based on the extracted features, are discussed. Publically accessible datasets and open-
source tools, which have been released in the recent years to assist the NILM research and to facilitate the comparison of disaggregation algorithms, arethen reviewed. Finally, mainapplicationsofenergy
disaggregation, including providing itemized energy bills, enabling more accurate demand predic-
tion, identifying mal-functioning appliances, and assisting occupancy monitoring, are presented.
1 INTRODUCTION
During recent decades, concerns over energy crisis and global warming conse-
quences have been significantly rising and many countries are introducing public policies in order to deal with these issues [1]. The increased volumes of green-
house gases (GHGs), the major source of which is the combustion of fossil fuels,
are believed to be the main cause of the global warming [2]. According to the third article of Climate Change General Law (CCGL), mitigation of progressive
rise in GHG emissions, not only necessitates the substitution of conventional
power generation units with more environment-friendly technologies, but also requires using electrical power in a more efficient manner [1]. Hence, reducing
the energy demand, through improved energy consumption management, is a
crucial measure to deal with the escalating energy crisis and global warming issues. A large portion of the global energy demand is due to energy consumption
of buildings [3,4]. According to Buildings Energy Data Book [5], almost 40% of
US primary energy consumption and 70% of the US electricity consumption are utilized in the buildings sector [4]; hence, any attempt to reduce the correspond-
ing consumption can result in a notable benefit.
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00017-6
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
378 CHAPTER 17: Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
A proper measure for wiser energy management in this sector is providing real-
time information about the electrical consumption of individual buildings [6]. For the case of the residential sector, such a detailed information about the
instantaneous electrical load of individual apartments can be provided by
smart meters. This information facilitates the implementation of smart grids [7] which in turn enable information exchange between energy providers
and consumers through large-scale monitoring and control [8,9]. Furthermore,
the data reported by smart meters enables the energy providers to estimate the aggregate consumption profile and formulate usage policies such as the hourly
change in rate [7].
In addition to the information about the total energy usage in residential build-
ings, more precise information including itemized energy consumption pro-
files can lead to further benefits for both end users and grid managers. Such detailed information aids the utility companies and grid operators to improve
their predictions of residential energy demand, facilitates the demand side
management, and can even allow them to have more precise user segmenta- tion. Besides, users typically have a poor estimation about the share of each
appliance in their household’s total energy consumption and are usually mis-
taken about the effective measures for saving energy [10–12]. For this reason, a report including itemized (appliance-by-appliance) energy consumption data
gives the users a more accurate idea about the devices with the highest con-
sumption and helps them reduce their monthly bill by taking more effective measures [7,13]. Kim et al. [14] demonstrated that 9%–20% of energy conser- vation can be obtained by implementing an energy consumption strategy based
on appliance-by-appliance utilization information [1]. Furthermore, providing customers with detailed energy bills improves their energy literacy [15]. More-
over, a precise log of devices usage is beneficial for checking appliance status
and detecting malfunctioning devices (MFDs).
The above-mentioned benefits of providing decomposed energy consumption
information motivated the development of appliance load monitoring (ALM) techniques. ALM methods can be divided into two main categories: intrusive
load monitoring (ILM) and nonintrusive load monitoring (NILM). ILM is a
more traditional way in which each device of interest is attached to a set of sen- sors to record its energy consumptions [16]. Though, this methodology
requires a large number of sensors and smart meters and is consequently an
expensive and cumbersome approach [7]. Hence, differentiating energy con- sumption of individual equipment in a cost-effective way remains an open
issue [14].
As one of the practical alternatives to deal with the mentioned issues, NILM or
nonintrusive appliance load monitoring (NIALM) was invented by Hart et al.
[17] from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). NILM requires simpler
3792 Appliance Categories
data gathering hardware but more complex software, for processing and ana-
lyzing signals, in comparison with ILM [18]. In NILM methodology, the aggre- gate electrical load of household is first measured and, through analyzing the
obtained overall signal, the consumption profile of each individual appliance is
then identified [19]. Several NILM methods have been introduced in the liter- ature; though, all of them include three main steps of data acquisition, extract-
ing features from data, and classifying appliances [16]. The data acquisition in
the NILM context only requires a single set of sensors attached to service entry of the house in order to capture the total residential load [16]. Using these
sensors, voltage and current signals are sampled at a proper rate [17] in order
to detect the device pattern more precisely [16]. After conducting the data acquisition, particular appliance features or signatures are extracted from the
obtained overall signal. Finally, the last step is dedicated to determining
the contribution of individual appliances to the aggregate loads utilizing the extracted features. NILM can be defined as a machine learning (ML) problem,
since appliance classification is conducted by running a mathematical algo- rithm and detecting the appliance signatures in the entire signal [9].
The objective of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive overview of energy
disaggregation methodology and its main applications. Since the choice of monitoring approaches, extracted features, and event detection methods
depends on the operational states and load types of individual appliances,
the corresponding device categories are first explained. Next, state-of-the-art device signatures including the macroscopic and microscopic features, which
have commonly been employed in the literature, are reviewed. Different clas-
sification algorithms, containing both supervised and unsupervised methods, are then reviewed and frequently employed accuracy metrics, which are utilized
to evaluate the performance of NILM algorithms, are discussed. Publically
available datasets and open-source tools, which have been provided by the NILM community in order to assist the energy disaggregation research and facil-
itating the comparison of algorithms, are subsequently presented. Finally, the
main use cases of energy disaggregation, such as providing the users with item- ized energy bills, detecting mal-functioning devices, occupancy monitory, facil-
itating more accurate energy consumption prediction, and enhancing the
effectiveness of demand response, are reviewed.
2 APPLIANCE CATEGORIES
The choice of the approach employed to monitor the electrical devices and the
suitable signature to identify their possible contribution to the aggregate load depends on their corresponding operation principle and load properties.
Accordingly, one common criterion to categorize devices, in the NILM context,
380 CHAPTER 17: Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
is based on their operational states [20]. Besides, the appliances can also be clas-
sified according to the type and linearity of their corresponding loads [21,22]. Information regarding the appliance categories provides the reader with a better
understanding of the underlying reason behind the choice of the sampling
hardware, employed signatures, and utilized event detection methods within the NILM framework. Hence, this section is dedicated to introducing different
categories of devices based on these two above-mentioned criteria.
2.1 Device Classifications Based on the Operational States
Hart [18] classified the devices based on the possible variations in their steady- state measured values of real and reactive power and categorized them in three
groups of On/Off, Finite State Machine (FSM), and continuously variable. He
had also declared that nonintrusive ALM prototype, proposed in his first article [23], can just be valid for On/Off devices, and might lead to significant errors if
applied to multistate appliances. In a report provided by Electric Power
Research Institute (EPRI) it was similarly indicated that the NILM methodology has determined to be an effective approach to monitor the devices with two
operation states [24]. Baranski and Voss [25] defined Permanent Consumer
as the fourth class of devices [4,20]. The operation characteristics of the above-mentioned classes of devices along with the corresponding examples
are provided below:
2.1.1 On/Off This class of appliances consists of devices with merely two operation states (On/Off). Several Household appliances, including table lamp and toaster,
belong to this category. Though, this category does not include devices with
multiple discrete “On” states including lamps with three modes or washing machines with different functionalities [18].
2.1.2 Finite State Machines This category includes devices with a finite number of operating states. The
switching pattern of these devices has a periodically repeating nature, the fact that facilitates the identification of their operation through disaggregation. This
class can properly describe several appliances including stove burners, dish-
washers, washing machines, and cloth dryers [20]. It is noteworthy that employing an “On/Off” model for an FSM device can result in recognizing it
as several individual appliances and even some operational states of the device
might not be recognized at all [20].
The model that simulates the operation principles of FSM devices is represented
by circles and arcs where the circles indicate the states (i.e., name and an oper- ating power level) and the arcs denote switching between different states. While
modeling the FSM appliances, zero loop-sum constraint (ZLSC) must be met.
3813 NILM Methodology
According to ZLSC criterion, in each cycle of state transitions sum of the vari-
ations in power must be equal to zero [18].
2.1.3 Continuous Variable Device The third category of devices, which is driven from the FSM model, is the gen-
eral form of FSM with infinite number of states. Such appliances have a contin- uous range of power draw and have neither repeated cycle for state transitions
nor specific step-change features. Examples of such appliances are sewing
machines, light dimmers, power drills with variable speed, and other power electronic controlled loads [18]. Distinguishing this type of electrical devices
in the aggregated load is a challenging task. The original NILM approach
and the following extended method, developed by Hart [18], were suitable for “On/Off” and FSM classes and were not applicable for identifying this type
of devices. Later, other researchers investigated different features of appliances
with variable power loads in order to find a promising NILM methodology for identifying these devices. The study conducted by Wichakool et al. [26] is one of
the latest studies focused on proposing NILM methods which are suitable for
appliances with various power loads.
2.1.4 Permanent Consumer The last category of devices are the ones that remain on the “on” mode contin-
uously such as telephone sets, TV receivers, and smoke detectors. The appli- ances belonging to this category are called “permanent consumer devices”
since their rate of energy consumption remains approximately constant [20].
2.2 Device Classifications Based on the Corresponding Load Characteristics
Each type of residential appliance results in a specific signature in the aggre-
gated load; hence, in addition to the above-mentioned categorization accord- ing to the operational states, devices can also be classified based on their load
type [21,22]. According to Dong et al. [27], residential electrical loads can be
broadly categorized as: resistive, inductive, capacitive, and other groups. The last class, which includes the devices not included in the first three categories,
can itself be divided into two groups of switch-mode power supply (SMPS) and
composite loads. Different types of electrical devices along with their load char- acteristics are summarized in Table 1.
3 NILM METHODOLOGY
The original NILM methodology was introduced by Hart et al. from MIT [17] which was followed by his proposed extended methods [18,28]. His approach
was extended in the studies conducted by Bouloutas and Schwartz [29],
Table 1 Appliance Categories Based on the Corresponding Features (Load Types) [21,22]
Load Types Examples of Household Appliances Load Characteristics
Resistive Appliances with heating elements: – Resistive kettle – Toasters, ovens – Space heaters – Coffee makers – Incandescent lighting
– Turning on: higher power, no transient – In use: decay to relatively flat power
level – Zero reactive power – No harmonics of the current
Inductive Appliances with AC motors: – Compressors (in fridges and – air conditioners) – Dishwasher – Washing-machine drain pump – Fans – Various types of mixers – Vacuum cleaners
– Turning on: initial spike in power, long transient
– In use: growth or decay to a flat power level
– Large reactive power – Odd-numbered harmonic current
Capacitive – No significant capacitive loads in buildings (due to the fact that although many loads have capacitive elements, their overall behavior is dominated by inductive and resistive characteristics)
– A purely capacitive load is the one that draws current through a sinusoidal shape that peaks in advance compared to the voltage sine wave
Including SMPS (nonlinear)
– TVs – Personal computers – Video recorders
– Turning on: short but very high amplitude transient
– Large amount of harmonic contents – Notable power fluctuations limited by
ceilings and floors in power level – Draw current in nonsinusoidal form
Composite loads (nonlinear) (no pure resistive, inductive and capacitive)
– Air conditioner (including compressor, fan, duct dampeners, and central humidifiers)
– Refrigerator (consisting of compressor (inductive load), door lights, ice maker, water dispenser), electric dryers, washing machines, dishwashers (consisting of a motor and a heating element)
– Operate in repetitive cycles that utilize each of their constituent loads differently
– Demonstrate specific behavior in different parts of their operation cycle determined by the load type of the component of the appliance that is in use
382 CHAPTER 17: Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
Leeb et al. [30,31], Cole and Albicki [32,33], Baranski and Voss [25,34,35], and
several other studies, which will be discussed in this section. Although the pro-
posed NILM methodologies follow different approaches, most of them include the common steps of data acquisition, feature extraction, and appliance disag-
gregation [36]. Data acquisition refers to measuring the aggregate load of a
household, which can be conducted with a high- or low-frequency sampling rate. The next step is dedicated to extracting specific features from the acquired
overall load signal. These features can include macroscopic or microscopic sig-
natures depending on the utilized sampling rate. Since each electrical appliance
3833 NILM Methodology
is characterized by a specific set of features, this acquired information allows
identifying the operation of devices. Therefore, the last step is dedicated to dis- aggregating the overall load into the consumption of individual appliance by
employing the extracted features and the available characteristic signatures of
devices. Accordingly, in the present section, commonly used device signatures, including the macroscopic and microscopic features along with their corre-
sponding required data acquisition methodology, are first described. Next, dif-
ferent supervised and unsupervised disaggregation algorithms are discussed in detail. Finally, state-of-the art accuracy metrics, which are employed in order to
compare the accuracy of different energy disaggregation, are presented.
3.1 Device Signatures
Each operating electrical appliance is characterized by a specific set of measur-
able features, also termed as “signatures,” which reveal information about its consumption pattern, nature, and operation [18]. Investigations on device sig-
natures were initiated by General Electric and Oak Ridge laboratories in the late
1980s, in which current was studies as a signature of motor-driven appliances [37]. In the early 1990s, researchers of MIT, EPRI in the United States [18], and
Electricite de France (EDF) [22] proposed active and reactive power draw
(P and Q) as signatures to track electrical equipment. Later, more parameters such as transient waves [31], harmonics [38], voltage and current [39], electro-
magnetic interference (EMI) spectrum [40], electrical current startup [41], and
electrical noise on the voltage, created by the abrupt switching of electrical devices [42], were addressed by other researchers.
Distinct signatures are captured while electrical devices are operating in steady or transient states. In case of steady-state operation, the extracted load features
have no variations, i.e., their variations with respect to a specific tolerance are
negligible. Steady operation states of devices can be differentiated by corre- sponding signatures which include power changes, root mean square (RMS)
voltage, RMS current, power factor, harmonics, and V-I trajectory [20,36]. Iden-
tifying electrical devices based on their steady-state signatures permits tracking their behavior in a continuous manner, which is easier to implement in com-
parison with conducting instantaneous measurements. Furthermore, these sig-
natures satisfy the above-mentioned ZLSC criteria for FSM devices [6].
The transient state instead refers to the operation period in which an electrical
device is between the off and the steady states. Some of the parameters which represent a transient event are their shape, size, duration, and time constant
[18]. Transient behavior of the load is caused by abrupt variations in circuit
condition such as turning a device on or off [36]. Electrical appliances typically consist of several components which could introduce such changes and create a
specific signature [38]. Detailed explanations regarding the transient behavior
384 CHAPTER 17: Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
of different household appliances were given in Section 2. In comparison with
the steady-state signatures, signatures corresponding to transient condition provide less information while they commonly require sampling with high fre-
quency [43]. In addition, network geometry and position of the device influ-
ences transient pulses [44]. Nevertheless, different electrical equipment with similar steady-state feature could be distinguished in total load by analyzing
their transient signatures. The mentioned notable benefit motivated researchers
to investigate several transient signatures [31,45].
In another categorization, signatures can be divided into two main groups of
macroscopic and microscopic features [4]. In this classification, macroscopic features refer to the real and reactive power changes, which are obtained using
low frequency sampling. On the other hand, harmonics, noise, acquired by
high frequency sampling, are categorized as microscopic signatures [4]. Details of different microscopic and microscopic signatures that have been frequently
employed in the literature are discussed below:
3.1.1 Macroscopic Signatures Signatures extracted from the total load using low frequency sampling (around
1 Hz) would result in obtaining macro level (macroscopic) features [46]. Real and reactive power variations are the most commonly used macroscopic signa-
tures. Real power refers to the energy consumed by electrical appliance during
operation; while the reactive power is not delivered to the load and is dissipated in the electrical cables as heat [21]. However, the reactive power, which is gen-
erated by capacitive and inductive components [20], provides an additional
information that can facilitate the procedure of identifying electrical devices. These macro level signatures were investigated in the primary works carried
out by EPRI and MIT [18,38,47]. In these studies, the magnitude and sign var-
iations of real (P) and reactive power (Q) were tracked over time and the cor- responding positive and negative changes were then matched in order to
identify the event of turning a device on or off. MIT researchers later extended
their initial approach in order to apply it to the total load of an industrial build- ing [31]. Their study demonstrated that after filtering the sudden peaks, the
obtained filtered electrical loads would have a small reactive power and a long
transient (i.e., Startup time). Hence, they concluded that load detection based on changes in real and reactive power has some limitations which can be com-
pensated by employing transient events as additional signatures [4]. In the
same context, Albicki and Cole [32,33] proposed utilization of slopes and edges in the power draw as additional features alongside the steady-state signatures.
In their extended approach, which is a promising method for identifying
motor-driven appliances, the edges and slopes are defined as upward power spike at the first moment of operation and gradual (with slower pace) varia-
tions during the period in which the device is turning on [4,27].
3853 NILM Methodology
3.1.2 Microscopic Signatures Features that are acquired using measurement devices with a high sampling fre-
quency are referred to as microlevel (microscopic) signatures [48]. Harmonics and Fourier transform, Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of signal noise, unpro-
cessed waveforms, and some features beyond FFT are examples of these high
frequency signatures [46]. In order to extract current waveform and noise fea- tures in high frequency, more complex hardware with high sampling rate are
required [46].
In a study conducted by Laughman et al. [38], harmonics were considered as
the third dimension added to ΔP-ΔQ plane in order to enhance load identifi- cation. The latter provides complementary features in the situations in which there is an ambiguous overlapping in ΔP-ΔQ plane [44,49]. According to the Nyquist criteria, the minimum sampling rate to obtain the highest har-
monic must be twice that frequency. Hence, since the 11th harmonic is often the highest employed harmonic, the sampling frequency of 1.2–2 kHz will be needed to obtain all of the required features. It is worth mentioning that high
frequency sampling of the waveform is limited by the storage and transmission capacities [4]. Unique information provided by harmonics of the current is spe-
cifically useful for identification of nonlinear appliances with nonsinusoidal
current. Small electrical devices, which draw similar amount of real and reactive power, could be identified by harmonic features of their currents. Moreover,
nonlinear devices, such as motor-driven appliances, produce substantial low-
order odd harmonics due to the triangular wave form of their current signal [18].
A study conducted by Leeb et al. [30] employed some of the first coefficients of the short time FFT, known as spectral envelope, as an extension to harmonics in
order to facilitate the detection of variable-load appliances. Patel et al. [42]
employed the spectrum of electrical noise which is created on the voltage signal due to the abrupt switching of electrical devices. This approach permits the
identification of appliances in the frequency domain when their transient fea-
tures are overlapped in time domain [24]. However, extracting and examining the mentioned transient noise in the signal is computationally expensive and it
is also necessary to train the system based on noise FFT of each household
appliance and their combinations [4].
Apart from the harmonics and FFT, other signatures such as wavelet transform,
geometrical shape of the I-V waveform, and transient energy have been utilized
in the literature [4]. Wavelet transform represents load’s physical behavior in the transient state [20]. It provides information about concurrent localization
versus time and frequency, an information that cannot be obtained using FFT
[4]. The geometrical properties of I-V curve, independent of time, were employed by Lee et al. [50] and Lam et al. [51] as a distinct appliance
386 CHAPTER 17: Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
signature [4]. It is worth mentioning that several distinct signatures can be used
simultaneously in order to increase the device identification accuracy [48].
3.1.3 Nontraditional Signatures In addition to previously mentioned features, which are obtained from the aggregate load’s signal, some nontraditional features have also been employed
in the recent NILM studies. These signatures are utilized in order to provide
additional information about the appliance operation, which are not con- tained in the ordinary features. Examples of such features are time-related
parameters including the time of the day, appliance run times along with tem-
perature and light sensing [27,36].
3.2 Disaggregation Algorithms
Disaggregation algorithms are the ones aiming at recognizing the appliances
which have contributed to the aggregate consumption load. Several disaggrega- tion algorithms have been proposed in the literature and, in a categorization
based on the system training, they can be divided into two main classes of supervised and unsupervised methods. Supervised approaches are the algo-
rithms that need their classifiers to be trained with labeled dataset, which
includes the signatures of different appliances.
In the unsupervised methods neither an event nor a-priori information and
labeled data are needed. In this class of algorithms, probabilistic models such
as factorial hidden Markov models (FHMM) [14] can be employed in order to simulate the behavior of the appliances. A recent review article on NILM meth-
odologies has shown increased interest toward unsupervised techniques [20].
Supervised approaches require system training, which makes them to be less scalable for disaggregating large number of household devices. Though, unsu-
pervised algorithms are less difficult to be implemented but provide less infor-
mation [24]. More detailed information regarding the above-mentioned categories of disaggregation algorithms are provided in the next parts of this
section:
3.2.1 Supervised Algorithms Supervised methods require labeled dataset including the features of different
appliances in order to train the classifiers. Such system training can be con- ducted both through on-line and off-line approaches [20]. In the on-line
approach, data is labeled based on real-time event detection and is used to train
the system concurrently. In the off-line training method, appliances are mon- itored in a specific environment and during a certain period and their corre-
sponding signatures are labeled.
3873 NILM Methodology
Installing a measurement unit for each individual appliance, in order to obtain
the required labeled data, is an expensive and time-consuming process. In an alternative approach, proposed by Hart et al. [17], appliances can be switched
on sequentially in order to detect them individually from the aggregate load [9].
This method was extended by labeling the operation of each device through a smart phone [52]. Several datasets, which include labeled data obtained
through investigating the signatures of several household appliances, are
now publically available. These open datasets, which are introduced in the next section, permit the researchers to train their disaggregation algorithms without
conducting the mentioned cumbersome measurement procedure.
Supervised disaggregation algorithms can be divided into two main categories
of pattern recognition and optimization methods. The former relies on the
events to identify the appliances while the latter does not depend on the events [20].
Pattern Recognition (Event-Based) Methods The original NILM algorithm, proposed by Hart et al. [17], was a pattern rec- ognition or event-based method. The pattern recognition methods commonly
include the following three steps: event detection, feature extraction, and pat-
tern matching.
The event detection step in Hart’s method was conducted through identifying
variations in steady-state power levels by an edge detector. In the extended methods, proposed by other researchers, additional criteria including spiking,
ramping and small oscillating behavior [33], large oscillation [53], and power
fluctuations [54] were proposed in order to detect the events. Apart from the mentioned criteria, several other steady-state and transient features, which were
introduced in the previous section, have been employed to detect events. Once
events are detected, labeled, and time stamped, a set of signature is captured from the measured samples around each event in order to characterize it.
Hence, event detection significantly reduces the mass of data to those just
related to the events [55,56]. In order to carry out the last step, several pattern matching algorithms have been proposed in the literature, which are briefly
reviewed in this section:
• Original MIT algorithm
Hart’s approach [23] was based on simple clustering of real and reactive power
changes. Accordingly, neglecting the time stamps, recognized steady-state changes of real and reactive power are first mapped to a scatter plot in P-Q (real
power vs reactive power) space. In the next step, in the P-Q plane, detected
events, which have powers with similar magnitude but different signs, are paired. The latter step is conducted on the grounds of the fact that frequently
observed power changes with negative and positive signs could be referred to
388 CHAPTER 17: Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
switching appliance on and off, respectively [23]. Whereas, irregular changes
may occur due to noise, measurement error, or simultaneous operation of appliances. The last step is focused on addressing the events which could not
be matched using the existing clusters. In order to do so, maximum likelihood
estimation is employed to match new feature vector with available clusters and to find the class of appliances that has most likely caused the event. Other
approaches have also been proposed in the literature in order to group multi-
dimensional scatter plots to clusters [23,57,58]. The most challenging issue in this step is to automatically specify the number of different clusters to look for.
Number of defined clusters represents how many devices constitute the aggre-
gated load [23].
On/Off and FSM models are next developed based on the clusters of step
changes. In order to develop the FSM model, ZLSC and uniqueness constraint (UC) are taken into account [18]. As was previously mentioned, the former
indicates that the sum of state transition sequences in any loop is zero, while
the later says that in each cycle there could be only a single off state with power level equal to zero [18]. As soon as the system learns an FSM, the corresponding
events are removed from the data and the procedure is continued by learning
other FSM from the remaining data. It is noteworthy that in the mentioned pro- cedures, some tolerance must be considered to deal with possible errors due to
the noise, load variations or concurrent operation of several small appliances.
An optimal decoding technique known as Viterbi algorithm amends errors for the cases in which one symbol is corrupted into another [18].
Once the above-mentioned procedures are conducted, each appliance forms a unique cluster in P-Q plane. In general, household appliances could be iden-
tified by matching each event with a database of known appliances features
[48]. This information can be collected either through a training process or using historical data [4].
It is worth mentioning that some electrical devices change their resistance after
turning on. This can cause mismatch in power changes and apply power drift around 10% [4]. Furthermore, variable loads and multistate household appli-
ances could not be recognized by this method. Moreover, low power electrical
devices were usually grouped into clusters near the origin. Hence P-Q plane does not provide sufficient information to distinguish this kind of electrical
devices [48].
• Extensions to MIT method
Other event-based disaggregation algorithms, employing additional features,
were later developed to extend original MIT approach. These studies employed
transient features [59] and a hybrid system which utilized both transient and steady-state signatures [31,60]. NorFord and Leeb [31] also developed a
3893 NILM Methodology
method to recognize overlapping transients which is a challenging issue in
event-based algorithms.
• Bayesian approach
In an approach proposed in Marchiori et al. [61] and Liang et al. [48], for each appliance, a naı̈ve Bayes classifier can be trained based on power level and fea-
tures corresponding to the state change. Hence, a set of trained classifiers will be
able to identify appliance-specific states. This method is based on the assump- tion that states of household devices are uncorrelated which is not always a cor-
rect hypothesis [20].
• Heuristic method
In this methodology, real and reactive power is clustered using the histogram
thinning approach. Comparing this method with Bayesian approach reveals that for situations when appliance draw stable power, Bayesian classifiers have
a higher performance [20].
• Supervised ML
In order to handle the cases in which a large number of electrical devices must
be distinguished with a high accuracy, supervised ML algorithms can be
employed. These methods enable conducting the training procedure using dif- ferent features including the state transitions and temporal information [49].
Artificial neural networks (ANN) [62] and Hidden Markov models (HMMs)
[63–66] are two common ML algorithms which have been utilized in the liter- ature. Performance of ML classifiers depends on the set of signatures, type, and
number of devices which have been employed for training [20]. ML methods
generally require a notable memory and are computationally intensive. In addi- tion, with an increase in the number of input parameters, their required train-
ing and classification time escalates [43]. Due to the complexity issues, applicability of HMM is limited and such complexity grows exponentially with
the number of devices. Besides, installing new household appliances requires
repeating the learning procedure [67]. Both ANN and HMM need massive amount of data for training and building the model for each individual appli-
ance, a problem that clearly becomes more critical while dealing with a large
number of devices. However, input feedback can cause ANN to be more adjust- able and have a better performance [7,39].
K-nearest neighbors algorithm is utilized to deal with the situations in which
there are several unlabeled items and K-labeled nearest neighbors can be accordingly used to train the classifier [7,40,43,68].
Other research activities presented in Srinivasan et al. [49], Kato et al. [69], Lin et al. [70], Figueiredo et al. [68], Figueiredo et al. [71], and Kolter et al. [72]
have employed support vector machines (SVMs) in order to accomplish
390 CHAPTER 17: Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
the disaggregation task. Harmonic signatures and low frequency features
could be used to train classifiers in SVM. Moreover, SVM accompanied by Gaussian Mixture Model Classifier (GMM) can create a hybrid model [73].
In hybrid SVM/GMM method, GMM demonstrates how current waveforms
are distributed while extracted power features are classified by SVM [20]. To enhance the obtained accuracy, different algorithms can be combined and
a hybrid model, called committee decision mechanisms, can be developed
[46,48,74].
Optimization (Eventless) Methods The second category of supervised algorithm consists of the optimization methods, which are also called eventless algorithms. An example of supervised
eventless disaggregation algorithm is the optimization method proposed by
Suzuki et al. [67]. This technique attempts to find the most optimized matching between the unknown measured aggregate load and the known loads available
in database [20]. The mentioned matching is conducted employing features
extracted from load measurements, which could belong to a single or a com- posite load [4,48,75]. Different optimization methods including integer pro-
gramming and genetic algorithm have been utilized in the literature to
accomplish the matching task [25,67,76].
The main challenge in implementing optimization methods is disaggregating a
combination of devices concurrently which may cause elevated complexity or lack of recognition of appliances due to signature overlapping [46]. The com-
plexity problem can become more critical when the aggregated signal contains
unknown loads which are not already available in appliance feature database [20].
3.2.2 Unsupervised Algorithms Unsupervised load disaggregation methods, which do not rely on labeled data,
have recently attracted researchers’ attention [14]. In these methodologies,
there is no need to have a prior knowledge about the appliances or training data, the fact that results in minimizing the initial setting costs and human
interaction. This characteristic makes unsupervised algorithms promising alter-
natives for being adopted in inexpensive large-scale load disaggregation sys- tems. In contrary to most supervised ML disaggregation, unsupervised ML
algorithms are eventless [20]. Appliance features are learned automatically
from aggregated load over a specific period such as several hours, days, or months [14,77] and these features are then assigned to a certain class [9]. It
is required to assign a label to each class which can be done either manually
or trough recent proposed approach known as Bayesian inference framework [78]. FHMM [14,79] and Additive Factorial HMMs [80] are some of the
unsupervised algorithms utilized in the literature for disaggregation purposes.
3913 NILM Methodology
Moreover, several FHMM could be combined to estimate sequence of hidden
states and build unsupervised algorithms which can decompose aggregated load into its contributing appliances [43]. FHMM and three main extensions
of it, called conditional FHMM, factorial hidden semi-Markov model, and con-
ditional factorial hidden semi-Markov model, were utilized by Makonin [43] for accomplishing residential load disaggregation.
Besides supervised and unsupervised disaggregation method, an intermediated semi-supervised technique was introduced by Parson et al. [9] which is com-
posed of both supervised and unsupervised modules. User interaction depen-
dency of supervised methods could be reduced through semisupervised algorithms. Supervised module trains its classifiers through off-line learning
using available dataset of labeled appliances and provides general appliance
models to be used in unsupervised module.
3.3 Accuracy Metrics
Rapid expansion of the NILM sector and the recent development of numerous NILM methods have made providing a standard method for evaluating their cor-
responding performance an essential task [20,48]. According to Liang et al. the
performance of NILM algorithms can be evaluated by using three accuracy meters such as disaggregation accuracy, detection accuracy, and overall accuracy. Several
accuracy metrics have been proposed in the recent studies [4,20,43]. Some of the
common metrics employed in the literature are given below:
• True/false positive rate
To evaluate performance accuracy of an event detector, corresponding true pos-
itives rate (TPR) and false positives rate (FPR) are compared. The TPR and FPR rate can be defined in terms of true positive (TP), true negative (TN), false pos-
itive (FP), and false negative (FN) samples as:
TPR ¼ TP TP + FN
(1)
FPR ¼ FP FP + TN
(2)
These rates can be visualized in a receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve.
ROC is a well-known technique to compare performance of detection and clas-
sification methods which are mainly used in pattern recognition [4,20]. In ROC curve, the best detector must be located as close as possible to the point corre-
sponds to the ideal detector which is TPR ¼ 1 and FPR ¼ 0 [14]. In NIALM framework, event detection is the starting point for classification, disaggrega- tion, and energy tracking. Hence, the more accurate the detection the less error
propagates to the following steps [24].
392 CHAPTER 17: Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
• Precision and recall
Similar to TPR and FPR, Precision and Recall are two accuracy metrics which
depend on TP, TN, FP, and FN and are defined as follows:
Precision ¼ TP TP + FP
(3)
Recall ¼ TP TP + FN
(4)
• F-score
F-score which was defined by Kim et al. [14] as harmonic mean of Precision recall can be defined in the general form [81] as:
Fβ ¼ β2 + 1 � �
� precision � recall β2 � precision + recall (5)
• Modified F-score
A modified version of F-score was employed in Makonin [43] as a more suitable approach to evaluate accuracy of NILM. Previously, only accuracy of state classi-
fications was measured for an appliance. In addition to previous measurements, this new method also measures how accurate appliance consumptions were pre-
dicted. In modified F-score, TP is replaced with Accurate TP + Inaccurate TP
which affects other metrics such as precision, recall, and F-score.
• Confusion matrix
Each element of this matrix represents how many times there is confusion between each state of an electrical device and other states or classified correctly
without confusion [82].
• Total power change
In previous metrics, it was assumed that all events are of same importance
despite the fact that some events are related to devices which draw high power while other events relate to small appliances. Therefore, considering a weight
for each event could be beneficial. To address this issue, in Anderson [24]
sum of the power changes due to missed events and false positive events were investigated. Similarly, the same author proposed another metric termed as
average power change.
• Hamming loss
In NIALM appliances the whole information lost due to incorrect classification
of appliance could be defined by a metrics known as Hamming loss [82].
3934 Available Open Datasets
• Energy disaggregation accuracy metrics
In addition to detection metrics, energy disaggregation metrics are provided to
satisfy accuracy evaluation requirements [82]. These metrics include error in total energy assigned, fraction of total energy assigned correctly, normalized
error in assigned power, and RMS error in assigned power, the details of which
can be found in Batra et al. [82].
4 AVAILABLE OPEN DATASETS
In order to assess the accuracy of disaggregation algorithms, it is essential to employ datasets, which contain both the total power demand of households
and the corresponding submetered (appliance by appliance) power data.
The following list includes the characteristics of the publicly available datasets, which can be utilized in order to evaluate the disaggregation algorithms:
• REDD
The Reference Energy Disaggregation dataset (REDD) [83], which includes
both total and itemized (submetered) power data obtained from six house- holds, was released in 2011. REDD, which was the first dataset particularly pro-
vided for NILM purposes, has become the most commonly used dataset for
assessing disaggregation algorithms [84].
• BLUED
The Building-Level fully-labeled dataset for Electricity Disaggregation (BLUED)
was introduced in 2012 [85]. BLUED dataset contains voltage and current mea-
surements, with a sampling rate of 12 kHz, obtained from a single household for a week. Although the data set does not contain submetered data, it includes
labeled and time-stamped records regarding the transition of each appliance
and can thus be a suitable ground truth for assessing the event-based algorithms.
• Smart*
The Smart* project, released in 2012, consists of measurement data from three households located in Massachusetts (United States). Although the submetered
data is just provided for one of the houses, the data set contains the data obtained from many additional sensors including aggregate electricity usage,
with a sampling rate of 1 s, temperature and humidity data in indoor rooms
and out-door weather data.
• Household Electricity Survey
The Household Electricity Survey dataset [86], also introduced in 2012,
includes submetered appliance level data from 251 houses out of which the
aggregate data is also collected for 14 households.
394 CHAPTER 17: Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
• Tracebase
Tracebase dataset [87] provides recorded power consumption traces of several
devices (both residential and office appliances) which were acquired using
Plugwise (a commercial measurement tool) units.
• AMPds
TheoriginalAlmanacofMinutelyPowerdataset(AMPds) [88],released in 2013, consisted of submetered and total power data obtained from a single house
for 1 year. The dataset was next extended in the following release (AMPds 2), to contain 2 years of measurement data.
• iAWE
Also introduced in 2013, the Indian data for Ambient Water and Electricity
Sensing (iAWE) [89] was also released in 2013, which contains both aggregate
and submetered power data captured from a single house located in New Delhi for 73 days.
• BERDS
BERDS—BERkeley EneRgy Disaggregation Dataset [90] includes a set of power-
related measurement data (real, reactive, and apparent power) from various
devices operating in the UC Berkeley campus. The monitored devices include lighting units, Hot Water Pump and heating, ventilating, and air conditioning
(HVAC) Fan loads, and some additional information including indoor and
outdoor temperatures and HVAC system airflow have also been provided.
• ACS-F1
ACS-F1 (Appliance Consumption Signatures-Fribourg 1) dataset [91] includes the electrical consumption measurement data (real power (W), reactive power
(var), RMS current (A), and phase of voltage relative to current (ϕ)) obtained through two acquisition sessions of 1 h on about 100 home appliances. The measurements have been conducted using plug-based sensors at low frequency
(typically every 10 s) and the monitored devices include 10 categories of
mobile phones, coffee machines, computer stations, fridges and freezers, CD players, lamps, laptops, microwave oven, printers, and televisions.
• UK-DALE
UK-DALE (the UK Domestic Appliance-Level Electricity) dataset [92] was
released in 2014. This data set includes the measured aggregate power data
(with the sampling rate of 16 kHz) and appliance-level power consumption (with the sampling rate of 1/6 Hz) from five households for duration of
655 days.
3954 Available Open Datasets
• ECO
ECO (Electricity Consumption and Occupancy) dataset [93], including power data collected from 6 Swiss households, was also released in 2014. The ECO
data set provides 1 Hz aggregate consumption data (current, voltage, and phase
shift for each of the three phases in the household) and 1 Hz submetered data obtained from selected appliances. This dataset also includes occupancy infor-
mation, obtained through manual labeling and passive infrared sensors.
• GREEND
The GREEND dataset [94], introduced in 2014, includes appliance level power
measurement data with the sampling rate of 1 Hz from 9 households in Austrian region of Carinthia and the Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
• SustData
SustData dataset [95] includes numerous energy consumption measurements
(real, reactive, and apparent power), captured at 1 min time intervals, from 50 homes (6 individual houses and 44 apartments).
• COMBED
The Commercial Building Energy Dataset (COMBED) dataset [96] includes
recorded power-related measurements, at 30 s intervals, obtained from 200
smart meters installed in an academic campus in India.
• PLAID
Plug-Level Appliance Identification Dataset (PLAID) [97] contains current and voltage measurements captured, with a sampling rate of 30 kHz, from 11 differ-
ent appliance types present in 55 households in Pennsylvania, United States.
• DRED
DRED (Dutch Residential Energy Dataset) [98], released in 2015, provides appliance level electricity measurements along with occupancy information
and ambient parameters obtained from a household in the Netherlands.
• Dataport (Pecan Street)
The Dataport database, owned by Pecan Street Inc., is the world’s largest source
of disaggregated customer energy data [84] and is available free of charge for academic use. The database contains electricity data captured from 722 house-
holds (including 501 single-family homes, 183 apartments, 35 town homes,
and 3 mobile homes) located in the American states of Texas, Colorado and California. Both aggregate load and individual appliance consumptions were
monitored, at 1-min intervals, in most of the houses.
396 CHAPTER 17: Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
• COOLL
The Controlled On/Off Loads Library (COOLL) [99], provided by PRISME lab-
oratory of the University of Orl�eans, France, is a dataset of electrical current and
voltage measurements obtained from 42 appliances of 12 types with 100 kHz of sampling frequency.
• WHITED
Worldwide Household and Industry Transient Energy (WHITED) Dataset [100] includes the start-up transient (first 5 s) records of 110 different appliances
(including 47 different device types) in 6 different regions (4 regions in
Germany, 1 in Austria, and 2 in Indonesia). The measurements have been car- ried out using a low-cost custom sound card meter with a sampling rate of
44 kHz.
• REFIT
The REFIT dataset [101] includes raw electrical consumption data (including aggregate load and submetered measurements) obtained from 20 households
sampled at 8 s intervals.
5 AVAILABLE ENERGY DISAGGREGATION OPEN-SOURCE TOOLS
Despite the recent rapid expansion of the energy disaggregation field, comparing
the proposed disaggregation algorithms has been a very challenging task. This
has been due to the utilization of different data sets, the lack of benchmark implemented algorithms, and various accuracy metrics which have been
employed in different studies to access the accuracy of their proposed algorithms
[82]. In order to tackle these issues, a publically available metadata (NILM metadata) and an open source toolkit (Nonintrusive load monitoring toolkit,
NILMTK) have been recently developed, by researchers of the NILM community,
in order to provide a means for comparing the energy disaggregation algorithms.
• Metadata for energy disaggregation
As was explained in the previous section, several energy disaggregation datasets
have been released over the last few years, though the lack of accompanying standard metadata makes processing these datasets a cumbersome and time-
consuming procedure. In order to tackle these issues, Kelly et al. [102] proposed
a hierarchical metadata schema for energy disaggregation, which models appli- ances (including corresponding prior knowledge and models of appliances),
meters, dwellings, and datasets. Their schema, which has been presented as
3976 Main Use Cases Of Energy Disaggregation
an open-source project, has successfully been used to capture metadata for
many of the above-mentioned datasets.
• NILMTK
Motivated by the lack of benchmark implemented disaggregation algorithms
and standard accuracy metrics, Batra et al. [82] proposed an open-source toolkit, called nonintrusive load monitoring toolkit (NILMTK), which enables
the comparison of energy disaggregation algorithms in a reproducible manner.
NILMTK provides parser for several existing datasets, a set of preprocessing methods, and a collection of statistics in order to describe the datasets. It also
includes two reference benchmark disaggregation algorithms (combinatorial optimization and HMM) and a set of accuracy metrics, which enable compar-
ing disaggregation approaches through a common set of accuracy measures.
However, the toolkit was designed to handle relatively small datasets [103]. To address this issue, the second release of this tool (NILMTK v0.2) was next
developed by Kelly et al. [103] which is able to handle arbitrarily large datasets.
In contrary to the first version of the tool, in which the entire data set is loaded into the memory, in NILMTK v0.2 the available data is loaded in chunks and
the result of the disaggregation algorithm is saved to disk chunk by chunk.
Hence, the tool is able to apply disaggregation on large datasets including Data- Port [84]. In addition, this extended version of the tool provides much richer
metadata support by being integrating with the above-mentioned NILM Meta-
data [102]. Through this integration, NILMTK v0.2 includes dataset converters for many of the aforementioned datasets including REDD [83], iAWE [89],
DataPort [84], UK-DALE [92], COMBED [96], and GreenD [94].
6 MAIN USE CASES OF ENERGY DISAGGREGATION
In this section, the main applications of energy disaggregation are reviewed.
The benefits that this method provides the users and grid operators with are as follows:
• Providing itemized energy bills and personalized energy savings recommendations
Providing energy bills including the consumption of individual appliance, in
order to help people reduce their energy, might be the most commonly cited
application of NILM [104]. A study carried out by Kempton and Montgomery [105] demonstrated that the estimation of most of the residential consumers
about the share of home devices in the total consumption is relatively poor.
As an instance, although the residential lighting constitutes a small portion of the overall residential energy consumption, consumers often indicate light-
ing and even most commonly mention it first while expressing their idea about
398 CHAPTER 17: Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
the main energy consumption causes. Whereas, hot water heating, which typ-
ically consumes about seven times the corresponding consumption of lighting, was pointed out less frequently. Hence, consumer’s failure to accurately esti-
mate the share of each device in the overall energy consumption leads to higher
total consumption or makes their attempts to save energy ineffective. Accord- ingly, if the residents are provided with an accurate feedback about the devices
with the highest energy consumption, they can modify their consumption
behavior in order to save energy and thus reduce their monthly energy bills [104]. Furthermore, apart from the possible saving, it has also been demon-
strated that consumers that are given appliance level energy consumption infor-
mation in their households have higher energy literacy [15].
Energy disaggregation can also enable providing the customers with more accu-
rate energy saving recommendations. Fischer et al. [106] presented a system which delivers energy-related recommendations based on household usage
profiling. Their proposed system provides comparisons of the user’s current
energy tariffs to the tariffs available on the market, and provides advices on how much the user can save by shifting detected deferrable loads (e.g., washing
machine or tumble dryer) to off-peak times. In order to do so, their proposed
system makes use of appliance-level load disaggregation along with real-time energy tariff API, an energy data store, and a set of algorithms for usage predic-
tion. The evaluation based on task-driven walkthroughs with 10 users with
3 months of monitored consumption data showed that system found cheaper tariffs for most of them (9/10).
• Detecting MFDs
Disaggregated electrical consumption can also be employed in order to identify
faulty appliances. As an instance, the frosting cycle of a fridge with a damaged seal
is more frequent than a normal one, the fact that can be identified using itemized fridge consumption data. Furthermore, appliance level data can facilitate individ-
uating the appliances (e.g., printers) that do not shift to stand-by mode within an
acceptable interval.A study byMartinandPoll[107]determined that bychanging the time-to-sleep setting of the determined MFD, the corresponding annual
energy consumption can be reduced by 39%. One of their recommendations
to tackle the problem of devices failing to go to sleep mode was applying auto- mated analysis in order to detect problems with device performance, a task which
can effectively be accomplished through online energy disaggregation [104].
• Occupancy monitoring
Another possible use case of NILM is estimating the occupancy state in the build-
ing. Such a possibility can be employed in order to remotely monitor the health of the occupants and specifically elderly people. Belley et al. [108–110] proposed an NILM-based methodology for activity recognition and applied their approach
3996 Main Use Cases Of Energy Disaggregation
on a smart home prototype by simulating daily scenarios taken from clinical tri-
als that were previously performed with Alzheimer patients. They demonstrated that by utilizing this method, with a minimal investment and the exploitation of
relatively limited data, activities of daily living could be efficiently recognized. In
their latest study [110], they also presented a new NILM-based algorithmic approach capable of recognizing erratic behaviors related to cognitive deficits
and of providing hints/prompts and reminders to guide a cognitively impaired
person in the completion of daily activities. Kalogridis and Dave [111] imple- mented an NILM-based behavior anemology detection within a healthcare
context and their results suggested that analyzing the TV and microwave
consumption profiles, obtained through disaggregation, can be a promising approach for identifying behavior irregularities. Alcalá et al. [112] proposed a
similar nonintrusive health monitoring method which detects activities of daily
living through disaggregation of smart meter power consumption profile. In their approach, unique daily routines are learned automatically from the
obtained appliance usage data via a log Gaussian Cox process. By applying their method on two real-world data sets, they showed that their method is able to
identify over 80% of the kettle usages. Furthermore, they demonstrated that their
approach permits earlier interventions in houses with a consistent routine, in comparison with a fixed-time intervention benchmark.
The NILM-based activity recognition can also facilitate implementing a smart
heating strategy [104,113]. Spiegel and Albayrak [114] employed energy disag- gregation techniques to detect the appliance usages and in turn the occupancy
state of the household. Next, they employed the inferred occupancy states to
optimize the heating schedules.
• Helping utility companies with customer segmentation
Knowledge about the customer’s household characteristics (including the num-
ber of occupants per household, their employment status, and the properties of their buildings) allows the utilities to personalize their energy efficiency cam-
paigns. Such personalization enhances the participation rates, results in larger
energy savings, and increases the customer retention. However, such informa- tion is commonly gathered through surveys which are an expensive and cum-
bersome process [104]. Disaggregation of smart meter data can be employed as
an alternative nonintrusive and cheaper approach for obtaining the mentioned information [115–118]. Beckel et al. [119] employed supervised ML method- ologies to automatically estimate the characteristics of a household from its
electricity consumption profile. They evaluated their analysis by analyzing smart meter data collected from 4232 households in Ireland and demonstrated
that an accuracy of more than 70% over all households can be obtained. In
their next study [116], they employed the smart meter data together with the corresponding ambient parameters and developed a method to determine
400 CHAPTER 17: Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
the sensitivity of a household to outdoor temperature and the times of sunset/
sunrise. This information was next utilized to improve their household classi- fication system and in turn the corresponding customer segmentation.
• Improved demand side response
Demand side response provides the possibility of shifting demand away from the peak and thus decreasing the corresponding cost of energy, although the
average daily consumption is not altered [104]. Furthermore, it provides helps
modifying the demand based on the intermittent power generation of renew- able energy sources; hence decreasing the need for expensive energy storage sys-
tems [120]. Pipattanasomporn et al. [121] provided the load profiles of selected major household appliances in the United States (clothes washers, clothes
dryers, air conditioners, electric ovens, dishwashers, electric water heaters,
and refrigerators) and discussed the demand response opportunities provided by these appliances. Energy disaggregation permits the utility companies to
identify a device with a high consumption rate at a peak hour in a household
and send a message to the corresponding user asking them to postpone their usage in order to smooth out the current peak in the demand [104]. In this con-
text, Kong et al. [122] proposed an upgraded architecture for existing smart
meter infrastructure in which it is upgraded by embedding an energy disaggre- gation algorithm. They claimed that their proposed architecture enhances both
the interactivity between utility companies and customers and the demand side
management.
• Enhancing the accuracy of energy demand prediction
Disaggregation of households’ power consumption allows grid operators to
improve their predictions of corresponding energy demand. Accordingly, Basu et al. [123] conducted a study in which the consumption profile of appliances is
first identified through disaggregation and the obtained appliance-by-
appliance load profiles along with meteorological information are next employed to predict the future usage. Rao et al. [124] presented a novel meth-
odology for determining active devices and predicting future usage to aggregate
power usage profile together with demographic data. By applying different models on their dataset, they demonstrated that SVM with Edge Analysis is
the most suitable model for device identification while autoregressive moving
average model is the most promising method for predicting future usage. Using the mentioned models, they obtained device identification and future con-
sumption prediction accuracies of 75% and 90% respectively.
7 CONCLUSION
Our review revealed that although numerous appliance features have been
investigated and several disaggregation algorithms have been proposed in
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- Data Analytics for Energy Disaggregation: Methods and Applications
- Introduction
- Appliance Categories
- Device Classifications Based on the Operational States
- On/Off
- Finite State Machines
- Continuous Variable Device
- Permanent Consumer
- Device Classifications Based on the Corresponding Load Characteristics
- NILM Methodology
- Device Signatures
- Macroscopic Signatures
- Microscopic Signatures
- Nontraditional Signatures
- Disaggregation Algorithms
- Supervised Algorithms
- Pattern Recognition (Event-Based) Methods
- Optimization (Eventless) Methods
- Unsupervised Algorithms
- Accuracy Metrics
- Available Open Datasets
- Available Energy Disaggregation Open-Source Tools
- Main Use Cases of Energy Disaggregation
- Conclusion
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-18---Energy-Disaggregation-and-the-Uti_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-.pdf
CHAPTER 18
Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
Roy Dong*, Lillian J. Ratliff†
*University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, †University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
The problem of energy disaggregation is the estimation of individual device usage patterns from
available aggregate energy consumption measurements. In this work, we consider the fundamental limits of the energy disaggregation problem, and use these limits to quantify the tradeoff between
the utilization of data for smart grid operations and the privacy provided to energy consumers. First,
our fundamental limits build on a statistical testing framework to provide a theoretical bound to the accuracy of energy disaggregation that can be achieved by any algorithm. Then, we present a frame-
work for understanding how variations in system design can affect the operational benefits of col-
lecting data, as well as the privacy of users. We instantiate this framework in a direct load control
example where we use thermostatically controlled loads and vary the frequency with which a cen- tralized controller receives sensor measurements. Our work formalizes the process of incorporating
privacy considerations into the design of modern energy systems.
1 INTRODUCTION
Energy disaggregation and nonintrusive load monitoring (NILM) are general terms, which refer to methods that estimate the energy consumption of individ-
ual devices, or statistics of the energy consumption signal, without installing
individual sensors at the plug level.1 The goals of different energy disaggrega- tion algorithms include event detection (i.e., determine when certain devices
switch states) and energy disaggregation (i.e., recover the power consumption
signals of each device in its entirety from the aggregate signal).
In many cases, we would like to have the latter for many households, but instal-
ling sensors on every plug in each house is prohibitively expensive and intru-
sive. For example, studies have shown that merely providing users feedback on their energy consumption patterns is sufficient to improve their consumption
behaviors [1–3]. Forecasts predict that 20% savings in residential buildings are attainable with the use of personalized recommendations based on
1Throughout this chapter, we will be using energy disaggregation and NILM interchangeably.
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00018-8
409
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
410 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
disaggregated data [3]. In addition, these savings are sustainable over long time
periods, and are not transient effects of introducing new interfaces to users. These device-level measurements can further be used for strategic marketing
of energy-saving programs and rebates, both improving efficacy of the pro-
grams and reducing costs.
Conversely,theavailabilityofsmartmeterdatapresentsprivacyrisksaswell.Pre-
vious studies have shown that monitoring energy consumption at high granu- larity can allow the inference of detailed information about consumers’ lives
such as the times they eat, when they watch TV, and when they take a shower
[4]. Such information is highly valuable and will be sought by many parties, including advertising companies [5], law enforcement [6], and criminals [7].
NILM algorithms can help guide regulation for privacy policies in advanced
metering infrastructures (AMIs) [8]. Analyzing NILM algorithms is a way to determine how much device-level information is contained in an aggregate sig-
nal. This information is critical to understanding the privacy concerns in AMIs and which parties should have access to aggregate power consumption data.
Governments, researchers, and organizations are working on privacy standards
and policies to guide AMI deployments.
Previous work on this front has proved very fruitful; researchers have consid-
ered the issue of data privacy in smart grid infrastructures, and have proposed
novel mechanisms for protecting the collected data (encryption, access control, and cryptographic commitments) [9, 10], by anonymization and aggregation
[11, 12], and by preventing inferences and reidentification from databases that
allow queries from untrusted third parties (via differential privacy) [13]. In the work presented in this chapter, we add to this literature by analyzing methods
to minimize the quality and quantity of data transmitted while still achieving
certain operational objectives.
To successfully understand the utility-privacy tradeoff in these smart grid oper-
ations, we must quantify two things. First, we must model the tradeoff between the quality of collected data and performance of smart grid operations. Second,
we must understand how data quality affects an adversary’s ability to infer a
consumer’s private information.
As a proof of concept, we consider the utility-privacy tradeoff in a direct load
control (DLC) example. To analyze the utility of data, we consider how the per-
formance of proposed DLC mechanisms change as fewer and fewer measure- ments are received by the controller. This allows us to quantify how much
data is needed for smart grid operations.
The underlying philosophy of our work is that these data transmission policies
often unintentionally transmit information about private parameters unrelated
to the original control goal: we separate operational parameters from parame- ters users may consider “private.” Furthermore, the operational goals of a
4111 Introduction
systems operator are different from the inferential goals of a privacy-breaching
adversary. Thus, different types of analyses are needed to understand the trade- off between data collection and smart grid performance versus the tradeoff
between data collection and user privacy.
In this work, we consider the energy consumption patterns inside the home pri-
vate. Thus, the fundamental limits of NILM algorithms can provide a good
benchmark for defining privacy risk; the state-of-the-art NILM algorithm may be a reasonably conservative model for an adversary. For example, if we use
the framework defined in [14, 15], we can analyze the accuracy of an adversary’s
inference when using energy disaggregation algorithms with a prior on device usage patterns and models for individual devices. An understanding of the fun-
damental limits can provide a theoretical guarantee of privacy, if we conclude
thatdisaggregationisimpossibleinacertainscenario.Itcanbeusedinthedesign of AMIs, by determining a minimum sampling rate, sensor accuracy, and net-
work capacity to achieve a desired goal. Further, it may allow us to determine
how many measurements actually need to be stored and transmitted.
To quantify the privacy risk in these mechanisms, we use recent results in NILM
to give theoretical guarantees on when NILM algorithms will fail: adversaries will not be able to infer the device usage of a consumer from observing the
aggregate power consumption of a building. In addition, we model the private
parameters of a consumer, and the inferences that can be made about private parameters from device usage patterns.
This chapter can be divided into two main contributions.
First, we study the fundamental limits of NILM algorithms. We consider a
building containing a number of devices. Given the aggregate power consump-
tion of these devices, we would like to distinguish between two scenarios (e.g., whether or not a light turns on, or whether it was a toaster or kettle that turned
on). In particular, provided an arbitrary NILM algorithm, we seek bounds on
the probability of distinguishing two scenarios given an aggregate power con- sumption signal. In addition, once we have this theory developed for two sce-
narios, we generalize to find an upper bound on the probability of distinguishing
between a finite number of scenarios. With this theory of the fundamental limits of NILM in hand, we address questions about the possibility of NILM
in the context of AMIs. Further, using high-frequency, high-resolution measure-
ments of power consumption signals of common household devices as the ground truth, we analyze the probability of successfully identifying common
scenarios in a household. We also analyze the tradeoff between successful NILM
and sensor/model accuracy, as well as sampling rate.
Second, we provide a general framework for considering the utility-privacy tra-
deoff in the smart grid. This framework formalizes the tension between high- resolution, high-frequency data providing better control of our energy systems
412 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
with the fact that this allows the inference of very personal information about
individual lifestyles. We instantiate this on a DLC example. We define an oper- ational objective and choose a privacy metric that represents the ability of an
adversary to infer private facts about energy consumers. Then, we consider
the operational performance and the privacy of consumers in a tradeoff analysis in this context.
The rest of this chapter is organized as follows. In Section 2, we review the rel- evant literature for both the fundamental limits of NILM and the utility-privacy
tradeoff in the smart grid. In Section 3, we discuss the fundamental limits of
energy disaggregation and how to calculate privacy bounds. In Section 4, we introduce a general framework for analyzing the utility-privacy tradeoff in
energy systems, as well as explore an example implementing the fundamental
limits of Section 3. We provide closing remarks in Section 5.
2 BACKGROUND
2.1 Energy Disaggregation Background
The problem of NILM is essentially a single-channel source separation prob-
lem: determine the power consumption of individual devices given their aggre- gated power consumption. The source separation problem has a long history in
information theory and signal processing and well-known methods include the
infomax principle [16], which tries to maximize some output entropy, the max- imum likelihood principle [17], which uses a contrast function on some distri-
bution on the source signals, and a time-coherence principle [18], which
assumes time-coherence of the underlying source signals. These often lead to formulations, which use some variation of a principle component analysis
or independent component analysis.
The most common applications of the source separation theory is to audio sig-
nals and biomedical signals. For these applications, it is often assumed that
source signals are i.i.d. stationary processes. We note that power consumption signals are very different from these types of signals. The power consumption
of a device has strong temporal correlations and is not stationary, for example,
whether or not a device is on at a given time is correlated with whether or not it was on an instant ago, and the mean power consumption signal changes with
the state of the device. The algorithmic and theoretical development in source
separation have therefore not been successfully applied to NILM and most methods for NILM are rather different to those developed for classical source
separation.
The field of NILM is much younger than source separation and most develop-
ment has focused on algorithms. We briefly outline a few approaches here. One
approach has focused on the design of hardware to best detect the signatures of
4132 Background
distinct devices [19–21], but algorithms to handle the hardware’s measure- ments are still an open problem. Another approach which has been taken by much of the machine learning community is to use hidden Markov models
(HMMs), or some variation, to model individual devices [22–24]; energy dis- aggregation can be done with an expectation maximization algorithm. In recent publications [14, 15], we model individual devices as dynamical systems and
use adaptive filtering. These are a few examples of concrete algorithms for
NILM. For a more comprehensive review, we refer the reader to [3].
The discussion presented here focus on the theoretical limitations of an arbi-
trary NILM algorithm. To the best of our knowledge, there has not been any previous work attempting to model the NILM problem in its full generality
and derive theoretical bounds. The work is inspired by recent work in differen-
tial privacy [25–28]. The underlying goal of differential privacy is to model pri- vacy in a fashion that encapsulates arbitrary prior information on the part of the
adversary and an arbitrary definition of what constitutes a privacy breach. The
theory of differential privacy can be extended to give similar, but weaker, bounds to those derived in this paper.
2.2 Utility-Privacy Tradeoff Background
Some of the earliest literature in applied privacy was ensuring that surveys could
be conducted in a privacy-preserving fashion. These methods were called ran-
domized response methods [29, 30]. These researchers noticed that there was structural bias when surveys requested sensitive information, such as whether
or not a subject was HIV-positive. The key component for guaranteeing privacy
was to given individual subjects deniability: a positive answer could either be a true response or due to the randomness in the survey procedure.
The next advances in the applied privacy literature was in statistical databases. In [31], the author argues that any definition of privacy should satisfy the fol-
lowing desideratum: nothing can be learned about a user with the database that
could not be learned without the database. One attempt to satisfy this desider- atum was k-anonymity [32], which provides methods to ensure that for any one
user, there are at least k � 1 users who appear indistinguishable from said user. More recently, the advent of big data has introduced many databases with potentially sensitive data that could be utilized by an adversary as side informa-
tion to infer private facts. For example, in [33], the authors are able to take
anonymized Netflix data and, using publicly available information from IMDB, recover the identities of individual users. These results pushed
researchers to no longer consider privacy of a database in isolation, but in
the larger context of widely available side information.
Arguably the most popular privacy metric, differential privacy was introduced in
[25]. Differential privacy requires an exogenous adjacency relationship, which
414 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
specifies pairs of potential values for private parameters that we hope to keep
indistinguishable. With this adjacency relationship, differential privacy is a bound on the change in the distribution of the observables between any two
adjacent private parameters.
Differential privacy is attack-agnostic, in the sense that as a metric it does not
suppose the adversary launches a particular type of inference attack. Further-
more, differential privacy is also agnostic to the amount of side information an adversary has, since it simply captures how much the distribution of the
observable changes for small perturbations to private parameters.
An alternative definition uses an information-theoretic metric to quantify pri- vacy loss. In particular, mutual information between a private parameter and a
public observable has recently become a popular metric [34, 35]. One interpre-
tation of the mutual information is the difference between the entropy of the prior distribution and the entropy of the posterior distribution [36]; from that
perspective, this metric has an intuitive interpretation as quantifying the reduc- tion in the uncertainty of an adversary due to a public observable. This metric is
attack-agnostic, since it simply quantifies a statistical relationship between pri-
vate and public variables. However, this requires a specification of the available side information to an adversary, as reflected in the prior distribution.
It is our belief that, similar to previous technological changes, new smart grid
technologies will motivate a sea change in how privacy is perceived, defined, quantified, and treated. All the previously mentioned references consider pri-
vacy in the context of databases, but a nascent area of research is the investiga-
tion of how privacy can be understood in the context of systems with dynamics.
Recent work in this regard includes the extension of differential privacy to
Kalman filtering [27], constrained optimization [37] and convex optimization [38], distributed control [39], and online learning [40]. In similar, there have
been efforts to consider information-theoretic metrics in the context of
dynamic systems such as the smart grid [41, 42].
Our framework is equipped to handle any privacy metric, but in our DLC exam-
ple, we use our fundamental limits to provide a measure of the inferential privacy
of users.
3 FUNDAMENTAL LIMITS OF NILM
3.1 Problem Statement
As mentioned in Section 1, NILM has a variety of end uses. For each of these potential applications, the statistics of interest may be different. Thus, when
we state the problem of NILM, we remain as general as possible to accommo-
date all these applications.
4153 Fundamental Limits Of NILM
We are given an aggregate power consumption signal for a building. Let y½t� 2 denote the value of the aggregate power consumption signal at time t for t ¼ 0, …, N � 1, and let y 2 N refer to the entire signal. This signal is the aggregate of the power consumption signal of several individual devices:
y½t� ¼ XD i¼1
yi½t� for t ¼ 0,…,N (1)
where D is the number of devices in the building and yi[t] is the power con-
sumption of device i at time t.
There are many possible goals of NILM. For example, the energy disaggregation
problem is to recover yi for i ¼ 1, 2, …, D from y. Another goal commonly stud- ied is to recover information about the yi from y, such as when lights turn on or the power consumption of the fridge over a week.
In general, we will refer to the phenomena we wish to distinguish as scenarios throughout this paper.
3.2 Model of Energy Disaggregation Algorithms
We outline a general framework for analyzing the problem outlined in
Section 3.1. At a high level, the framework can be summarized as follows. First, any NILM method must choose some representation for individual devices;
these can be seen as functions from some input space to N. Depending on the purpose of the NILM algorithm, the input space will vary; essentially, sce- narios we wish to distinguish should correspond to different inputs in the input
space. Then, we describe NILM algorithms as functions on the observed aggre- gate signal. The definition is meant to be general and hold across both gener-
ative and discriminative techniques.
3.2.1 Aggregate Device Model Formally, let ðΩ,F,PÞ denote our probability space. As in Section 3.1, D denotes the number of devices and N denotes the length of our observed power
signal.
Let Θi denote the input space for the ith device. Inputs represent scenarios we wish to distinguish. The output space, representing the power consumption sig-
nal of an individual device, is N for every device. Then, the model associated with the ith device can be denoted as Gi : Θi �Ω ! N. Here, we have the con- dition that, for any ui 2Θi, Gi(θi, �) is a random variable. Finally, let Θ ¼Θ1 �Θ2 �⋯ �ΘD, and let G : Θ�Ω ! N be defined as Gððθ1,θ2,…,θDÞ,ωÞ ¼
PD i¼1Giðθi,ωÞ. Here, G denotes our aggregated system
(i.e., the model of our building).
416 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
Definition 1. Given that the input is θ 2Θ, the distribution of the power consumption is G(θ, �). We emphasize the generality of this framework. Many state-of-the-art methods
can be formulated in this framework. For example, factorial HMM methods
[22–24] can be thought of as single-input, single-output systems where the input is the state of the underlying Markov chains. The Markov transition prob-
abilities become a prior on the input signal. In previous work [14, 15], we for-
mulated the models as dynamical systems whose inputs are real-valued and correspond to the device usage. Thus, we now have a general way of expressing
different models of devices in an NILM problem.
3.2.2 NILM Algorithms An algorithm for NILM will be a function of our observed aggregate power con-
sumption signal. Its result will depend on the goal of the algorithm, and the end
use of the algorithm output. For example, it could be the set of possible esti- mated disaggregated energy signals, fŷigDi¼1, or the set of possible discrete event-labels on our time-series data, or a set of statistics on the
disaggregated data.
More formally, let S represent some NILM algorithm and Z represent its output space, discussed earlier. Then, the algorithm could be thought of as a function
S : T ! Z. We will analyze a general S in the following section.
3.3 Fundamental Limits of Energy Disaggregation
In this section, we derive an upper bound on the probability of successfully dis-
tinguishing two scenarios with any NILM algorithm. Then, we extend these
results to handle the case where we wish to upper bound the probabilities of distinguishing a finite set of scenarios, as well as two collections of scenarios.
Note that in our framework, scenarios correspond to inputs to our device
models, and we will use the two terms interchangeably.
3.3.1 Distinguishing Two Scenarios First, fix any two inputs v0, v1 2 Θ, which we wish to distinguish. For example, we may pick v0 and v1 so that they differ only in the usage of one device. In that case, we are analyzing the difference in observed output caused by whether or
not, say, a microwave turns on in the morning. Alternatively, we may choose
inputs that correspond to more dissimilar scenarios, such as whether or not a household uses an air conditioner at all. The choice of v0, v1 depends on
which scenarios we wish to distinguish in our NILM algorithm.
As mentioned previously, let S : N ! Z denote any NILM algorithm. Then, let I : Z ! f0,1g be an indicator for whether or not an algorithm output satisfies
4173 Fundamental Limits Of NILM
some condition. For example, I could output 1 if a particular discrete phenom-
ena (e.g., a light turning on) is detected in the algorithm output, and 0 other-
wise. Or, I could output 1 if the estimated power consumption signals of individual devices lie in a certain set.
Suppose this indicator captures whether our algorithm believes the input is v0 or v1. That is, (I ∘ S) should output 1 if the NILM algorithm believes the input is v1 and 0 if it believes the input is v0. For this reason, from this point forward we
will refer to I as our discriminator.
Definition 2. (I ∘ S) is measurable, that is, (I∘S)�1({1}) is a measurable set in N, with respect to the Borel field on N. We note that this is a reasonable assumption, as most, if not all, NILM algo-
rithms in practice will be a finite composition of measurable functions.
In addition, we note that this is a very conservative understanding of an NILM algorithm. In general, these algorithms are not be designed simply to distin-
guish between v0 and v1, and are likely not to be optimal in this regard. Thus,
by analyzing an optimal (I ∘ S), we have a conservative upper bound on the probability of distinguishing v0 and v1. In particular, the scenarios v0 and v1 may contain additional information, so our optimal separator is allowed to
use side information, such as the switching times of devices, when doing infer- ence, making our bound more conservative.
Furthermore, we can contrast our contribution with existing work in differen- tial privacy. Whereas differential privacy would consider any v0 and v1 that are
adjacent, and bound the change in distributions for a fixed mechanism, here we
fix a particular v0 and v1 and consider a bound on the performance of any mechanism.
Thus, we can formulate this in classical hypothesis testing frameworks seen in
the statistics literature [36]. Our main contribution is the abstraction of the task of NILM that allows us to use well-known results in detection theory.
Let y denote our observed signal. Suppose that G(v0, �) has a probability density function (pdf) f0 and similarly G(v1, �) with f1. Let our likelihood ratio be defined as:
LðyÞ ¼ f1ðyÞ f0ðyÞ
(2)
The maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) finds the input that maximizes the likelihood of our observations. The MLE is given by:
θ̂MLEðyÞ ¼ v1 if LðyÞ � 1v0 otherwise �
(3)
418 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
If we have a prior p on the probability of v0 or v1 as inputs, we can find the max-
imum a posteriori (MAP) estimate. This finds the input that is most likely given our observations and prior. The MAP is:
θ̂MAPðyÞ ¼ v1 if LðyÞ � pðv0Þ pðv1Þ
v0 otherwise
8< : (4)
Note that this prior can be a discrete distribution or a density. However, for
simplicity, we will treat the prior as a discrete distribution throughout this paper; small notational changes are required for the prior to be a density.
Now, suppose we have a maximum acceptable probability of mislabeling the input v1; let this parameter be denoted β > 0. Also, let u denote the true input. The optimal estimator with this constraint is:
min θ̂
Pðθ̂ ¼ v1jθ ¼ v0Þ subject to Pðθ̂ ¼ v0jθ ¼ v1Þ � β
(5)
By the Neyman-Pearson lemma, the non-Bayesian detection problem in Eq. (5)
has the following solution:
θ̂NBðyÞ ¼ v1 if LðyÞ � λv0 otherwise �
(6)
where λ is chosen such that Pðθ̂NB ¼ v0jθ ¼ v1Þ ¼ β. Throughout the rest of this paper, we will consider the MAP, but these can be extended to the other two cases. The probability of interest is the probability of
successful NILM:
Definition 3. For the two-input case, the probability of successful NILM for an estimator θ̂ is:
X1 i¼0
Pðθ̂ðyÞ ¼ vijθ ¼ viÞpðθ ¼ viÞ (7)
This can be explicitly calculated given the densities and the prior. In addition,
any algorithm and discriminator (I ∘ S) will perform worse than θ̂MAP, so the MAP estimate provides an upper bound on any algorithm’s probability of successful NILM.
Proposition 1. Any estimator θ̂ will have a probability of successful NILM bounded by:
X1 i¼0
Pðθ̂MAPðyÞ ¼ vijθ ¼ viÞpðθ ¼ viÞ (8)
4193 Fundamental Limits Of NILM
3.3.2 Distinguishing a Finite Number of Scenarios This easily extends to distinguishing between a finite number of scenarios. Let V
denote a finite set of inputs. Then
Definition 4. For the N-input case, the probability of successful NILM for an esti-
mator θ̂ is:
XN i¼1
Pðθ̂ðyÞ ¼ vijθ ¼ viÞpðθ ¼ viÞ (9)
The MAP is given by:
θ̂MAPðyÞ ¼ arg max v2ΘPðGðθ, � Þ ¼ yjθ ¼ vÞpðθ ¼ vÞ (10)
Proposition 2. There is an upper bound to the probability of successful NILM pro- vided by the MAP:
XN i¼1
Pðθ̂MAPðyÞ ¼ vijθ ¼ viÞpðθ ¼ viÞ (11)
3.3.3 Distinguishing Two Collections of Scenarios This philosophy of deriving an upper bound extends nicely to whenever we
wish to distinguish two collections of scenarios. This corresponds to distin-
guishing two sets of inputs.
Now, suppose we have two sets of inputs: V0 and V1. We can still define the
probability of successful NILM in this context:
Definition 5. For the case where we wish to distinguish two sets of inputs,
the probability of successful NILM for an estimator θ̂ is:
X1 i¼0
Pðθ̂ðyÞ 2 Vijθ 2 ViÞpðθ 2 ViÞ (12)
Depending on the context, this quantity may be calculable. In other cases, it
may be possible to find good approximations or upper bounds. We will see this arise in Section 3.4.
3.4 Gaussian Case
In this section, we instantiate our theory on the special case where our model is
a deterministic function with additive Gaussian noise.
3.4.1 Two Scenarios Suppose our system takes the following form:
Gðθ,ωÞ ¼ hðθÞ + wðωÞ (13)
420 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
where h : Θ ! N is a deterministic function and w is a random variable. Fur- thermore, fix any two inputs v0, v1 which we wish to distinguish, and suppose
that w is a zero-mean Gaussian random variable with covariance Σ. Further- more, suppose our prior is p(θ ¼ v0) ¼ p(θ ¼ v1) ¼ 0.5. This can encapsulate the case where the uncertainty arises from measure- ment noise and model error. Referring to our motivating example, suppose
that the only difference between v0 and v1 is the presence of a toaster turning
on once in v1. The question we are asking is: Can we detect the toaster turning on?
Then, let f0 denote the Normal pdf with mean h(v0) and covariance Σ, and sim- ilarly let f1 be the Normal pdf with mean h(v1) and the same covariance Σ. For shorthand, let μ0 ¼ h(v0) and μ1 ¼ h(v1). Since the covariance matrix Σ is the same for both random variables, θ̂MAP is determined by a hyperplane. Let aT ¼ μ0 �μ1ð ÞTΣ�1 and b ¼ 1
2 μT1Σ
�1μ1 �μT0Σ�1μ0 � �
. Then
θ̂MAPðyÞ ¼ v1 if a Ty + b � 0
v0 otherwise
� (14)
Now, suppose the input is actually v0. That is, y is distributed according to f0. Then, the signed distance from y to the boundary of the hyperplane is given by 1
kak2 ða Ty + bÞ. This is a linear function of Gaussian random variable, and is thus
also a Gaussian random variable. Furthermore, the mean of this random var- iable will be 1kak2 ða
Tμ0 + bÞ, and the variance will be:
σ2 ¼ 1k a k22 aTΣa ¼ ðμ0 �μ1Þ
TΣ�1ðμ0 �μ1Þ ðμ0 �μ1ÞTΣ�2ðμ0 �μ1Þ
(15)
Thus, given that the input is actually v0, the probability that θ̂MAPðyÞ ¼ v0 is:
Pðθ̂MAPðyÞ ¼ v0jθ ¼ v0Þ
¼ 1 2
1� erf � 1k ak2
ðaTμ0 + bÞffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 2σ2
p
0 BB@
1 CCA
0 BB@
1 CCA (16)
where erf is the Gauss error function and Eq. (16) is simply the 1 minus the
cumulative distribution function (cdf) of the distance to the hyperplane eval- uated at 0, that is, the probability that the signed distance is positive.
The computations are exactly the same for the case where the input is
v1. Thus:
4213 Fundamental Limits Of NILM
Proposition 3. By Eq. (8), the probability of successfully distinguishing v0 and v1 with the MAP is given by:
1
2 1� erf
� 1k ak2 ðaTμ0 + bÞffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 2σ2
p
0 BB@
1 CCA
0 BB@
1 CCA (17)
Note that, in general, disaggregation algorithms would not be designed simply
to distinguish between v0 and v1, and are likely not to be optimal in this regard. That is, Eq. (17) provides a theoretical upper bound on how good any possible
disaggregation algorithm could perform in distinguishing v0 and v1. Also, note
that 1kak2 ða Tμ0 + bÞ will be positive if μ06¼μ1. It follows that the upper bound is
always greater than 0.5 if μ06¼μ1, and the MAP achieves this upper bound. Thus, if the inputs cause different outputs from the system, there will always exist an
algorithm that improves the discrimination between v0 and v1 over blind guessing.
3.4.2 K Scenarios In this section, we build on the development in Section 3.4.1 to handle the case
where we wish to distinguish several inputs.
Suppose now that we have a finite set of inputs that we wish to distinguish.
Consider the set fvigKi¼1, where vi 2 Θ for each i. Again, suppose all these inputs are equally likely, that is, pðθ ¼ viÞ ¼ 1K for all i. We wish to find the MAP. We carry over the assumption of Gaussian noise with variance Σ. The MAP will par- tition N with hyperplanes of the form given in Section 3.4.1.
So, suppose the actual input is vi. We wish to ask: What is the probability the MAP will accurately identify vi from the other K � 1 inputs? Let μi ¼ h(vi) for i ¼ 1, …, N. Then, let aTi ¼ ðμ1 �μiÞTΣ�1 and bi ¼ 12ðμTi Σ�1μi �μ1Σ�1μ1Þ. Given our observation y 2 T, we wish to ask the probability that 1kaik2 ða
T i y + biÞ > 0 for i ¼
2, …, K (i.e., that the input u1 is more likely than any of the other inputs). More
succinctly, define
A ¼ aT2= k a2k2 aT3= k a3k2
⋮ aTK= k aKk2
2 664
3 775 b ¼
b2= k a2k2 b3= k a3k2
⋮ bK= k aKk2
2 664
3 775 (18)
We wish to ask the probability that Ay + b is in the positive orthant of N. Recall that y is distributed according to mean μ1 and covariance Σ. Thus, the random variable Ay + b has mean Aμ1 + b with covariance AΣA
T. The probability that this
random variable is in the positive orthant cannot be analytically calculated, but can be approximated with high accuracy.
422 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
This can be done for i ¼ 2, …, K as well, and provide an upper bound on the probability of successful NILM.
3.4.3 Linear Systems In this section, we specialize the previous theory to the case where all our devices are linear systems. Suppose that the dynamics of our household are
of the form y ¼ Aθ + e, and our noise e has covariance σ̂2I. Note that σ2 as defined in Eq. (15) is equal to σ̂2.
Now, suppose the sets that we wish to distinguish are V0 ¼ {0} and V1 ¼ {v: L �kvk2 � U}, for some constants 0 < L � U. That is, can we detect an input with magnitude in the range [L, U]? By Eq. (12), we have the probability of successful
NILM for an estimator û is:
Pðθ̂ðyÞ ¼ 0jθ ¼ 0Þpðθ ¼ 0Þ + Pðθ̂ðyÞ 2 V1jθ 2 V1Þpðθ 2 V1Þ (19)
First, consider a fixed input v 2 V1. If we suppose that θ ¼ v, then the probability of an estimator θ̂ distinguishing v from 0 is bounded by:
Pðθ̂ðyÞ 6¼ 0jθ ¼ vÞ � 1 2
1 + erf k Avk2 2
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 2σ2
p � �� �
(20)
This can be seen by noting that, after a projection into one dimension, the sep- arating hyperplane is the point �kAvk2/2. Without loss of generality, let us sup- pose the separating point is kAvk2/2. Note that this equation is an increasing function of kAvk2. This gives us: 1
2 1 + erf
k Avk2 2
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 2σ2
p � �� �
� 1 2
1 + erf σmax ðAÞU 2
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 2σ2
p � �� �
(21)
where σmax ðAÞ is the largest singular value of A. This held for any v 2 V1, so measure-theoretic properties give us:
Pðθ̂ðyÞ 2 V1ju 2 V1Þ � 1
2 1 + erf
σmax ðAÞU 2
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 2σ2
p � �� �
(22)
Proposition 4. In the linear system case, the probability of successful NILM is
bounded above by:
pðθ ¼ 0Þ + 1 2
1 + erf σmax ðAÞU 2
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 2σ2
p � �� �
pðθ 2 V1Þ (23)
These are bounds which do not depend explicitly on a model, but rather only
on the sensitivity of the model. Thus, even with just knowledge of the variance of the noise and the sensitivity of our linear systems, we can still find an upper
bound on the probability of successful NILM.
4234 Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
4 UTILITY-PRIVACY TRADEOFF
In this section, we consider the utility-privacy tradeoff in the smart grid. We
use the fundamental limits proved above as a privacy metric in this section. In other words, we focus on interpreting θ as the device usage patterns inside the household, rather than the “inputs” given to devices. In this section, u will
correspond to the input given to a system using collected smart meter data for operational benefit. To emphasize the point: u, which is considered the
“input” in this section, is distinct from θ, which is the private parameters of users. We have tried to ensure that the notation refers to the same objects between sections, but these objects might have different roles, for example,
θ is the input to devices when proving fundamental limits, but θ is the private information in this section.
4.1 Framework
In this section, we introduce a framework for quantifying the tradeoff between
the operational utility of data and the privacy levels of consumers.
Privacy-preserving mechanisms can be divided into two categories: mecha-
nisms which control access to data, or mechanisms which vary the quality of data.
Access control methods have been researched primarily by the cryptography community, with very strong results [43]. The former can provide strong guar-
antees of privacy against outside adversaries, but does not protect users from
privacy breaches by those who have access to the data. For example, your utility company should have access to your energy consumption, but they may be able
to infer aspects of your lifestyle from these patterns [4, 15].
By contrast, quality-based methods have been researched by several communi- ties. For example, most differential privacy mechanisms add noise to the data
[25, 44]: as the noise levels increase, the quality of the data decreases, and pri-
vacy levels increase as well. As another example, systems can sample real-time data less frequently to increase the privacy levels of consumers; these mecha-
nisms are considered in [8, 45]. By modifying the quality of the data prior to
its transmission, these methods guarantee privacy against both outside adver- saries and insiders. However, the modifications to the data’s quality must be
carefully designed to not erode its original utility; if the data are no longer use-
ful for its intended purposes, then the efficiency and comfort benefits of these novel technologies will be lost.
In this chapter, we will focus on privacy-preserving mechanisms that vary the quality of data to achieve different levels of privacy.
424 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
4.1.1 The Utility of Data The utility of a particular set of data comes from the improvement in the per-
formance of some service due to said data. To model these systems, we follow a control theoretic framework.
We are interested in the performance of our system at some set of times T +. This includes the discrete time cases T ¼ {0, 1, …, N � 1} for some N 2 or T ¼ {0, 1, …}, as well as the continuous time cases T ¼ [0, Tf] for some Tf 2 or T ¼ ½0, ∞Þ. For simplicity, we will assume operation of the system begins at time t ¼ 0 and 0 2 T. Our system has some state space X, which represents all possible configurations of the system at one point in time. Usually, we will take X ¼ n for some n 2 . We will denote the state at time t 2 T as x(t). Similarly, the control actions we can take upon the system live in some input space, U, with the input at time t de- noted u(t). The dynamics of the system are captured in a function ϕ : X �UT ! XT which takes an initial condition and an input signal across all T and specifies which trajectory in XT the system will follow. For example, in the context of linear time-invariant systems, if ϕ(x0, u) ¼ x, then x is the unique solution to differential equation _xðtÞ ¼ AxðtÞ + BuðtÞ with initial condition x(0) ¼ x0. The performance of the system is evaluated with respect to a cost function J : XT �UT ! . The system has an initial condition x0 2 X and obeys the sys- tem dynamics ϕ. The system operator wants to pick a u 2 UT such that J(ϕ(x0, u), u) is kept low. Ideally, the optimal control problem would be solved: minuJðϕðx0,uÞ,uÞ. However, this often is difficult and, in practice, we will use controllers that will approximate the optimal control strategy subject to
information and tractability constraints.
To attempt to minimize this cost, the system operators will design a controller.
This controller will determine the input u 2 UT that will be given to the system. However, this controller will have a limited amount of data about the system.
In our framework, we will consider how variations in the quality of the data
affect the system operator’s control decisions, and therefore affect the realized cost of the system. For some quality level q and time t 2 T, we will let Y (q, t) denote the data available to the controller at time t.2 With this data, the con-
troller will pick a control input uðtÞ 2 U. We let this process be denoted ucðYðq,tÞ,tÞ 2 U.
2For generality, we have not included details of what space these objects q and Y (q, t) live in. Formally, q
can live in a general space, but we will often think of q 2 . For example, q can denote the sampling period of our system, as we will explore in Section 4.2. Similarly, Y (q, t) can live in some arbitrary space for
each q and t. In the example in Section 4.2, Y (q, t) will be a collection of random variables that the
controller can observe at time t.
4254 Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
With this controller specified, we can consider the mapping from quality level q
to realized cost J. That is, for a particular quality q, the controller will use the controller and issue control command ucðYðq,tÞ,tÞ 2 U at each time t 2 T. This will cause the realized cost to be J(ϕ(x0, uq), uq) where uq 2 UT is defined as uqðtÞ ¼ ucðYðq,tÞ,tÞ 2 U for every t 2 T. Abstractly, this allows us to quantify the utility of data by showing how the con-
trol performance of the cyber-physical system erodes for different quality levels of data. As previously mentioned, we will instantiate this in a concrete example
in Section 4.2.
4.1.2 The Privacy of Data Data are collected from consumers with the intent of improving Internet of
Things (IoT) operations. However, these data also allow the inference of private information about consumers, unrelated to IoT operations. This section quan-
tifies how much information about the private lives of consumers is contained
in data.
In the previous section, we fixed a set of time indices T +, and defined a data mechanism Y (q, t) for each quality level q and time t. This data mechanism
defined what information is collected and transmitted, and we quantified how a controller’s performance changes as the quality level q is varied. In this
section, we will consider how variations in q affect the privacy levels of con-
sumers in the data mechanism Y (q, t). We take a statistical perspective on pri- vacy: What is the inferential power of these new observations relative to some
private parameter? Our model is as follows.
Users have a private parameter θ 2Θ, which they wish to protect. These private parameters θ live in a space Θ with some particular structure, which depends on the privacy metric in use. In differential privacy, the private parameter space Θ is equipped with an “adjacency” relationship specifies which pairs (θ, θ0) 2Θ�Θ which should be indistinguishable. For information theoretic metrics and the inferential privacy metric used in Section 4.1.5, θ is seen as a random variable taking finitely many values, that is, Θ has finitely many ele- ments and there exist a prior distribution Pθ for the random variable θ.
These privacy metrics should be general enough in definition to allow evalu-
ation for any data mechanism Y under consideration. In addition, it will
depend on the quality q: so our privacy valuations be a function of the struc- ture of our data mechanism, as well as the quality level. This will be denoted
m(Y, q). This framework is general enough to capture any quality-varying
privacy-preserving mechanisms, and this generality is needed to be able to encompass the spectrum of possible privacy risks and information structures
in IoT.
426 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
In Section 4.1, we outlined a general framework for quantifying the utility-
privacy tradeoff in Internet of Things applications. Before covering an concrete example in the smart grid, we will discuss a new privacy metric, infer-
ential privacy. Informally, inferential privacy is a guaranteed lower bound on
the probability an adversary will correctly infer θ from the observations (Y(q, t))t2T.
Depending on the context, different privacy metrics may be more applicable than others. As argued in the philosophy of privacy [46], we believe that
a plurality of privacy metrics and definitions is required to capture the
essence of a concept as context-dependent and essentially contested as privacy [47].
Differential privacy gives a very powerful guarantee that is both agnostic to
attacks and adversary’s available side information; however, many practical applications require a particular structure of the uncertainty, such as additive
independent Laplacian or Gaussian noise. For example, it is not clear how to consider how the level of differential privacy varies in a dynamical system when
the sampling rate is adjusted.
By contrast, information theoretic metrics lend themselves nicely to the design of noise in a fashion that is oftentimes optimal with respect to some
criterion. In [34], the authors are able to design an optimal noising scheme
subject to a performance constraint in database estimation, and in [41], the authors consider compression schemes in the context of the smart grid, and
provide a theoretical bounds on the information leakage subject to a distortion
constraint.
Our work on privacy builds a hypothesis testing framework, which has been
well studied in the information theory [36] and statistics [48] communities. Variational calculus methods for statistics were first introduced by Neyman
and Pearson [49], and have been a fruitful way to find optimal estimators.
In addition, a popular metric for critiquing the performance of an estimator is known as the minimax risk, which measures an estimator’s expected loss
against a worst-case distribution [50]; the minimax risk can act as a measure
of the difficulty of a hypothesis testing problem. Alternatively, Fano was able to analyze the difficulty of the hypothesis testing problem by considering
the entropy and mutual information between the parameter of interest
and the observables [36, 51]; these results were extended to observations on the continuum in [52]. Each of these methods can provide a measure
of the hypothesis testing problem’s difficulty, which we use as a guarantee
for privacy.
Throughout this section, we will be analyzing the privacy level for a fixed qual-
ity q. Naturally, one can vary q afterwards to see the effect of quality on privacy levels.
4274 Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
4.1.3 User and Data Mechanism Model First,weintroduceamodelforhowtheprivateparameterθ influencestheobserved data (Y(q, t))t2T. We will allow Y to denote the possible values of (Y(q, t))t2T. Definition 6. The private parameter θ follows a distribution Pθ. Similarly, (Y(q, t))t2T given θ has a conditional distribution Py|θ. We note that, formally, this assumption is quite succinct, but, in practice, deter-
mining these distributions are rarely trivial.
4.1.4 Adversary Model Next, we introduce our adversary model.
Definition 7. Our adversary is able to observe the transmitted data (Y(q, t))t2T, and has knowledge of Pθ and Py|θ. In addition, this adversary has an arbitrary amount of computational power. This adversary has access to the measured data signal, and also holds priors on
the consumer’s private information θ. He also knows how this private informa- tion affects the consumer’s usage of IoT devices, Py|θ. Although this adversary has quite a bit of knowledge about the consumers, he does not hold arbitrary
side information.
We note that it may not be realistic to suppose the adversary has access to Pθ and
Py|θ. However, any adversary who tries to infer θ from y with less information will only do worse than our adversary model. Thus, this model provides a con- servative estimate against all weaker adversary models.
4.1.5 Inferential Privacy Metric Our privacy metric is the probability of error if an adversary tries to infer the
private variable θ.
Definition 8. Under the usage model outlined in Assumption 6, a system is “α inferentially private” if, for any estimator θ̂ : Y ! Θ, we have Prðθ̂½ðYðq,tÞÞt2T� 6¼ θÞ � α (24)
This estimator can be based on information in Pθ and Py|θ. Here we note that this is in essence an ex ante privacy metric, that is, the privacy
is spread across Θ according to Pθ. As often arises in many statistical estimation problems, an ex post privacy metric (i.e., a privacy metric that guarantees pri-
vacy for every type) is not a well-posed problem.
For example, suppose Θ ¼ {0, 1}, and consider the estimator θ̂ 0. For any consumer of type θ ¼ 0, the adversary will correctly infer their type with this estimator. In other words, an adversary can always violate the privacy of one type of consumer by making the blanket assumption that everyone is a fixed
type. In a sense, we gain privacy by noting that the adversary has to be successful
across the different types Θ (weighted according to Pθ).
428 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
Regardless of the algorithm the adversary uses, we can bound the probability it
will successfully breach a consumer’s privacy. Furthermore, this formula allows us to vary the quality level q, such as how often data are collected and transmit-
ted. We will examine this on a concrete example in Section 4.2. This guarantee is
also simple for consumers to interpret, and can be used in the design of privacy contracts between the utility companies and consumers [53].
Remark 1. To instantiate the above general framework for utility-privacy trade- off with our fundamental limits of NILM, we will use Pθ to denote our prior and
PYjθ to denote our device models. Thus, if the fundamental limit from Proposition 2 is α, then we know our system is α inferentially private.
4.2 Example: Direct Load Control
In this section, we instantiate our utility-privacy framework in a concrete con- text. Specifically, we consider the privacy of DLC programs in the smart grid.
DLC has been a promising future direction for the smart grid for a variety of
reasons. By controlling loads which can be modified without much impact on consumer satisfaction, we can allay many costs by shifting loads from peak
demand and compensating for real-time load imbalances. In addition, as
renewable energy penetration increases, the generation side of power is grow- ing more uncertain and will require demand flexibility. In this section, we will
consider the load imbalance signal as exogenous, and use a DLC scheme to try
and compensate the imbalance.
In addition, such DLC policies are being deployed today. For example,
Pacific Gas and Electric deployed the SmartAC program in Spring 2007 [54]. Another provider of demand response services has recruited over 1.25 million
residential customers in DLC programs, and has deployed over 5 million DLC
devices in the United States. In California, they have successfully curtailed over 25 MW of power consumption since 2007 [55]. As these programs are being
deployed on a large scale, it is important to consider the privacy aspects of these
programs [4].
In this chapter, we consider different sampling rates as a method of varying the
quality of data q. Our motivations for this are twofold.
First, there are many cases where noise-free data are required, for practical, reg-
ulatory, performance, or economic reasons. For example, suppose random
noise is added to your energy consumption signal before being transmitted to the utility company. A consequence of this mechanism is that the energy bill
you receive will not be a deterministic function of your energy usage, but rather
a random variable with a conditional dependence on your energy usage. Many consumers may be unhappy with this mechanism in which they may be billed
4294 Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
for more energy than they used, and a lot of regulatory overhead would be nec-
essary for a utility company to roll out such a mechanism, even in the face of statistical arguments that the effect of such a random mechanism is negligible
in the long run.
Second, an analysis of the effect of sampling rates on operational performance
is the first step in enacting the data minimization principle for dynamical sys-
tems. In the United States, the Obama Administration examined privacy issues in its June 2011 smart grid policy framework report [56]. The report recom-
mends that State and Federal regulators should consider, as a starting point,
methods to ensure that consumers’ detailed energy usage data are protected in a manner consistent with federal Fair Information Practice (FIP) principles.
One of the key principles is data minimization. This principle is consistent with
the notion of privacy by design [57].
Similarly, the FIP principle of data minimization appears in smart grid privacy
recommendations by the National Institute of Standards and Technology [58], the North American Energy Standards Board [59], the Department of Energy
[60], the Texas Legislature and Public Utility Commission [61], and the Cali-
fornia Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) [62].
The NISTIR 7628 [58] expresses the data minimization principle in the smart
grid context as:
Limit the collection of data to only that necessary for Smart Grid operations,
including planning and management, improving energy use and efficiency,
account management, and billing.
All these recommendations and policy proposals have been broad in coverage by necessity, as regulators do not want to burden electric utilities with specific
limits on what they can collect. However, electric utilities who want to follow
these privacy recommendations do not have a sound reasoning principle to help them decide how much data is too little or too much. Our goal in this sec-
tion is to start discussing scientifically sound principles that can help determine
how much data to collect in order to achieve a certain level of functionality of the grid, and how much privacy is granted to consumers under this data collec-
tion policy.
By analyzing the effect that sampling rate has on Smart Grid operations, we
can begin to quantify the utility of data, a necessary first step to enacting data
minimization. Intuitively, there should be a sampling rate where higher sam- pling frequencies have a negligible effect on the system’s performance. For
example, this could be due to the ability of the controller to leverage this high
frequency data, or the time scales of the system itself. Conversely, there should intuitively be a sampling rate that is so low that the system’s performance is
comparable to the performance should the controller receive no
430 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
measurements at all. Finding these regimes of operation is the goal of the first
half of our framework.
As mentioned previously, there are several approaches to preserve the privacy of
a consumer participating in an AMI, including adding noise to data, modifying how data are aggregated, and the duration of data retention [9–13, 35]. These quality-varying mechanisms are currently an active topic of research. We note
that our work is complementary to these other privacy policies. Our analysis is meant to assist electric utilities in following privacy recommendations: we seek
to determine how much data to collect and how often it should be collected.
Once this is in place, encryption, anonymization, and aggregation techniques can be employed in tandem.
We evaluate the performance of a widely studied DLC scheme as a function of
the sampling rate. As we will later show, increasing the sampling period is a means of improving the privacy of consumers. In particular, we focus on a
DLC application using thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) to manage load imbalances.
4.2.1 DLC Model In this section, we consider one recently proposed DLC program for concrete- ness. We note that our contribution is a general framework for numerically ana-
lyzing the sensitivity of these DLC programs to different information collection
policies. We consider this research to be complementary to other research in how parameters affect system performance [63, 64].
TCLs, which are often heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC)
systems for buildings, are a promising avenue for the implementation of DLC policies [65, 66]. This is due to the fact that buildings have a thermal
inertia and can, in essence, store energy. Moreover, power consumption can
be deferred and shifted while resulting in an imperceptible change in temperature.
4.2.2 Thermostatically Controlled Load Model There are several TCL and DLC models in the literature (e.g. [67–69]) and our analysis can easily be applied to any of these models. For concreteness, we con-
sider the model presented in [69].
Let I denote the set of TCLs participating in a DLC program. We model the tem- perature evolution of each TCL i 2 I as a discrete-time difference equation: xiðk + 1Þ ¼ aixiðkÞ + ð1�aiÞ½Ta,iðkÞ�miðkÞTg,i� + EiðkÞ (25)
In the earlier equation, xi(k) is the internal temperature of TCL i at time k, Ta, i is
the ambient temperature around TCL i, mi is the control signal of TCL i, and Ei is
4314 Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
a noise process.3 The term ai ¼ expð�hB=ðRiCiÞÞ, where hB is the base sampling period,4Ri is the thermal resistance of TCL i, and Ci is the thermal capacitance of
TCL i. The Tg term represents the temperature gain when a TCL is in the ON state, and Tg ¼ RiPtrans, i, where Ptrans, i is the energy transfer rate of TCL i. Let Pi denote the power consumed by TCL i when it is in the ON state.
We note that, in this framework, we model the variability of occupancy behav-
ior in the Ei(k) terms. When a large amount of historical data, as well as auxiliary features, are available, one can update the posterior distribution of Ei(k) to reflect the available observations. However, for simplicity, in this chapter, we
simply assume a fixed distribution.
The local control for TCL i is modeled by the variable mi. We assume that the
local controller performs an ON/OFF hysteresis control based on its setpoint
and deadband. For a cooling TCL, this is defined as:
miðk + 1Þ ¼ 0 if xiðk + 1Þ < Tset,i �δi=2 1 if xiðk + 1Þ > Tset,i + δi=2 miðkÞ otherwise
8< : (26)
In these equations, Tset, i and δi are the temperature setpoint and deadband of TCL i, respectively. If mi(k) ¼ 1, then we say that TCL i is in the ON state at time k, and similarly mi(k) ¼ 0 means that i is in the OFF state at k. In the next few sections, we will assume that these local control signals can also
be overridden by the direct load controller, replacing Eq. (26). We will intro-
duce a privacy-aware sampling policy that only intermittently provides the con- troller access to observations (xi(k),mi(k)).
4.2.3 Direct Load Control Objective We consider DLC policies that attempt to compensate for load imbalances and defer demands from peak times by switching TCLs between the ON state and
the OFF state. The marginal cost of peak loads and unexpected load imbalances
is responsible for a large portion of the preventable costs in the electricity grid; for a more detailed treatment of the benefits and impact of a DLC policy which
can shave demand, we refer the reader to [70].
Formally, we consider the load imbalance as an exogenous variable. In partic-
ular, the centralized DLC controller is given some desired power trajectory Pdes
3Our development focuses on air conditioning for notational simplicity, but similar statements can be
made for heaters. 4Here, hB denotes the time scale of the dynamics. Later on, we will introduce how often the direct load
controller may receive fewer measurements to preserve privacy, and this subsampling period will be
denoted h.
432 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
for the TCLs.5 The goal of the controller is to minimize the error between the
actual power consumed by the TCLs and the signal Pdes, that is, it wishes to min- imize
P k
P i2IPimiðkÞ�PdesðkÞ
�� ��. 4.2.4 Direct Load Control Capabilities To achieve the DLC objective, we assume that the centralized DLC controller
has the capability of telling TCLs to switch modes between ON and OFF when
the temperature x(k) is between Tset, i � δi/2 and Tset, i + δi/2. More explicitly, if the centralized DLC controller issues a command to a TCL to switch from OFF
to ON, the TCL turns on its air conditioner earlier than it would have in the
absence of a control command. This DLC command will override the local con- troller. We assume that the centralized DLC controller has no control authority
when the temperature is outside of the deadband, with the local controller
deterministically in the OFF state when x(k) < Tset, i � δi/2 and in the ON state when x(k) > Tset, i + δi/2.
Note that the control policy effectively tightens the deadband. In particular, this control policy maintains customer satisfaction in the sense that the effective
deadband is never larger than the user-specified deadband.
Our model of a direct load controller is as follows. We assume the centralized
DLC controller has access to the parameters β ¼ (ai, Ta, i, Tg, i, Tset, i, δi, Pi) for each TCL i 2 I. In other words, the controller knows the dynamics of each TCL. However, it is only able to observe the signals (xi(k), mi(k)) for certain values of
k, determined by the privacy-aware sampling policy. One of the contributions
of this paper is the extension of a DLC controller to situations where measure- ments are intermittent.
For the rest of this section, we will assume a privacy-preserving sampling
policy that considers subsampling rates. In other words, our sampling policy is parameterized by a subsampling period h 2 , and at time k, the centralized controller has access to the measurements ðxðkÞ,mðkÞÞk2Tk, where the set Tk ¼ fhl : l 2 ,hl � kg denotes the time indices in which measurements are available.6
4.2.5 Direct Load Controller In this section, we outline a DLC policy inspired by work in the recent literature
[65, 69]. Our model of a direct load controller is as follows. First, the controller
maintains an estimate of the thermal state of each TCL. Let x̂iðkÞ and m̂iðkÞ denote the estimates of xi(k) and mi(k), respectively.
5We consider this load imbalance signal exogenous. In future work, we hope to examine elements
of generation, such as scheduling, and how it is influenced by these programs. 6For simplicity, we assume that either all the TCLs transmit their state information at time k or none of
them do. More asynchronous transmissions can be handled with some additional notational baggage.
4334 Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
The estimator acts as follows:
x̂kðkÞ ¼ xkðkÞ if k 2 Tk aix̂kðk�1Þ + ð1�aiÞ½Ta,iðk�1Þ�m̂iðk�1ÞTg,i� if k62Tk
� (27)
m̂iðkÞ ¼
miðkÞ if k 2 Tk 0 if k62Tk and x̂iðkÞ < Tset,i �δi=2 1 if k62Tk and x̂iðkÞ > Tset,i + δi=2 m̂iðk�1Þ otherwise
8>>>>< >>>>:
(28)
At time k, the estimator uses the observation if it is available. If no measurement
is available, it evolves the estimates according to the dynamics with known parameters β, under the assumption that Ei(k) ¼ 0. Similarly, it supposes that a TCL does not switch states under the local controller, unless the estimate of
the thermal state of the TCL leaves the deadband.
These estimates are used to issue control commands. Our controller takes a bin-
ning approach, as seen in recent research [65, 69]. Each TCL is assigned to a bin based on its thermal state relative to its deadband, and whether or not it is in the
ON or OFF state.
Based on its estimate of how many TCLs are in each bin, the controller issues a command to each bin, stating what fraction of the TCLs in each bin should
switch states. Here, for simplicity, we assume that every TCL consumes the same
amount of power when on (i.e., Pi ¼ P for all i 2 I). For more details, we refer the reader to [71].
An example of this control algorithm is depicted in Fig. 1. In the top figure, we see how the TCLs are divided into bins, with Nbin ¼ 6. The number in each bin denotes how many TCLs are actually in the bin, the number in parentheses
denotes the estimated number of TCLs in the bin. In this example, we assume Pi ¼ 2.5 kW for each TCL i. There are an estimated 495 TCLs on, so the esti- mated total power consumption of the TCLs is 1.2375 MW. Suppose, in an
extreme case, we wish to decrease power consumption by 500 kW. Thus, we would have to turn off 200 TCLs. According to the estimate, if we tell every
TCL in the (1, ON) bin (the top-left bin), 154 TCLs will turn off. Therefore,
we must tell 46 TCLs in the bin (2, ON) to turn off as well, where there is esti- mated to be 170 TCLs. Thus, the control command issued to the bin (1, ON) is
1, to bin (2, ON) is 46/170 ¼ 0.27, and to all other bins is 0. In the bottom figure, the TCLs actually in each bin switch from the ON state to the OFF state according to a Bernoulli coin flip, with probability equal to the command
issued, and the estimates are updated based on the expected number of TCL
switches. The numbers inside the bin represent the actual number of TCLs in each bin after the switching is completed, and the estimated number of TCLs
in each bin after the switching is completed.
On
Off
x
Deadband
160 (154)
162 (170)
170 (171)
144 (133)
189 (178)
175 (194)
1 .27
On
Off
x
Deadband
0 (0)
118 (124)
170 (171)
304 (287)
233 (224)
175 (194)
160 (154)
44 (46)
FIG. 1
An example execution of the DLC control law.
434 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
Closing the loop on this model development, we have the following model of
the TCL with the control actuations by the centralized DLC controller. The
closed loop dynamics are given by the following equation:
xiðk + 1Þ ¼ aixiðkÞ + ð1�aiÞ½Ta,iðkÞ�m� i ðkÞTg,i� + EiðkÞ (29)
Here, the parameters are the same as in Eq. (29). Note that the only difference in these dynamics and the open-loop dynamics without DLC is the modifica-
tion of the m � iðkÞ term. Furthermore, the mode of the TCL with DLC, m� iðkÞ is
given by:
4354 Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
m � i ðkÞ ¼
1�miðkÞ with probability c miðkÞ with probability 1�c
� (30)
m � iðkÞ will depend on the local control law and the centralized DLC law, with
preference given to the centralized command. Here, mi(k) is the local control
law as defined in Eq. (26).
4.2.6 DLC Model Simulations For simulations, we assume each TCL consumes Pi ¼ 2.5 kW when in the ON state, and we consider a DLC controller in control of 1000 TCLs. Parameters for each TCL i are drawn independently, from distributions based on recent studies
of a 250 m2 home [65, 69]. The time step hB was chosen to be hB ¼ 1 min, and the number of bins Nbin ¼ 10. The ambient temperature Ta ¼ 32°C for all TCLs,7 and the noise process Ei(k) is independent across k and distributed according to an N(0, 0.0005) distribu- tion8 for each k.
California Independent System Operator market signals are given in 5-min intervals [69, 72], so for simulations, the signal Pdes is independently drawn
from a U(875 kW, 1.35 MW) distribution.9 That is, Pdes(k) is uniformly drawn
for k 2{0, 5, 10, …}. For other values of k, we take the linear interpolation. Simulations of the aggregate power consumption of all the TCLs are shown in
Fig. 2 for the uncontrolled case, the case where h ¼ 1 min, and the case where h ¼ 30 min. Comparing the top plot with the middle and bottom plots, we can see that a DLC policy can reduce the load imbalance even when the controller
does not always receive measurements. However, small unforeseen tempera-
ture deviations can cause the controller’s performance to degrade if enough measurements are not provided, as seen by comparing the middle and
bottom plots.
In addition, the thermal state of one TCL is shown in Fig. 3. We can see that the
temperature inside the TCL remains inside the deadband, resulting in no loss of
comfort to the consumer, in all three cases.
7For these simulations, we assumed that the ambient temperature is constant across 1 h, which can be
reasonable for this short-time frame. 8This is the variance of the noise for one time step, so 0.0005 models the variance of temperature across
hB ¼ 1 min. 9This framework can handle other distributions for the load imbalance signal, but a uniform distribution
was chosen as a noninformative prior [48]. The parameters of the distribution were chosen as reasonable
values for which energy consumption could be compensated. From simulations, we find that a larger
interval is more difficult to track, as expected.
900 1000 1100 1200
P o w
e r
(k W
) 1300
900 1000 1100 1200
P o w
e r
(k W
) 1300
900 1000 1100 1200
P o w
e r
(k W
) 1300
0 10 20 30
Uncontrolled
40 50 60
0 10 20 30
Sampling period = 1 min
40 50 60
0 10 20 30
Sampling period = 30 min
Time (min)
40 50 60
FIG. 2
A sample simulation of the aggregate power consumption of 1000 TCLs. The solid line represents the
actual power consumption, and the dotted line represents the desired power consumption. The top
figure shows the power consumption in the absence of any control commands, the middle figure shows the
power consumption with a sampling period of h ¼ 1 min, and the bottom figure shows the power consumption with a sampling period of h ¼ 30 min.
436 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
In Fig. 4, we plot the error between the actual power consumption and the
desired load imbalance compensation signal. First, we randomly drew a Pdes signal and TCL parameters. Then, for this fixed Pdes signal and TCL parameters, we ran 500 trials for each sampling period h, and we consider the empirical dis-
tribution of the difference between the actual power consumed by all the TCLs
and the desired power signal: P
i2IPimi �Pdes. We used the ‘1 norm on the error signal, so, if we assume a fixed price for spot market electricity purchases/sales
throughout the hour interval, this is directly proportional to the cost the utility
company must pay.
4.2.7 DLC Privacy Analysis As a counterpoint to the previous section, we take the theory in Section 3 and use them on real data to address several different problems. We used the emonTx
wireless open-source energy monitoring node from OpenEnergyMonitor10
22.4 22.6 22.8 23.0 23.2 23.4 23.6
22.6 22.4
22.8 23.0 23.2 23.4 23.6
22.4 22.6 22.8 23.0 23.2 23.4 23.6
T e m
p e ra
tu re
( °C
)
0 10 20 30
Thermal state (uncontrolled)
40 50 60
0 10 20 30
Thermal state (h = 1 min)
40 50 60
0 10 20 30
Thermal state (h = 30 min)
Time (min)
40 50 60
FIG. 3
The thermal state of one sample TCL. The top graph shows the thermal states of the TCL when there is no
control. The middle and bottom graphs show the thermal states based on a controller that receives
observations every h ¼ 1 min and h ¼ 30 min, respectively. The dotted lines indicate the deadband limits. The diamonds indicate when the DLC policy issued control commands to the TCL.
4374 Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
from several devices at 12 Hz. We used current transformer sensors and an alter-
nating current (AC) to AC power adapter to measure the current and voltage,
respectively, of the devices that we monitored. For each device we measured the root-mean-square (RMS) current, RMS voltage, apparent power, real power,
power factor, and a UTC time stamp.
Data were recorded in a laboratory setting for a microwave, a toaster, a kettle, an
LCD computer monitor, a projector, and an oscilloscope. As our sensors are
highly accurate, we treat the measurements as noise free.
What is an upper bound for the probability of successfully distinguishing a
toaster turning on and a kettle turning on, as a function of the sampling rate? We analyze how likely we are to distinguish the two devices as the sampling rate
changes. This is shown in Fig. 5. We down-sampled the 12 Hz signal. In
10http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/emontx.
0 h = 1 h = 5 h = 10 h = 15
Sampling period h (min)
h = 30 h = 60
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000 Error of DLC as a function of sampling period
1 n
o rm
( kW
)
FIG. 4
A plot of how the error between the actual power consumed by the TCLs and the desired power
consumption signal empirically varies with the sampling period h. The value we are plotting is
k Pi2IPimi �Pdesk1. The whiskers indicate all data points within 1.5 times the interquartile range. For reference, the error after 500 simulations of uncontrolled TCLs has an empirical mean of 5.39 MW with
a standard error of 302 kW.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0.55
0.6
0.65
0.7
0.75
0.8
0.85
0.9
0.95
1
Downsampling rate
P ro
b a b ili
ty o
f co
rr e ct
d e te
ct io
n
Probability of correct detection vs. downsampling rate
FIG. 5
The probability of successfully discriminating a toaster and a kettle as a function of the sampling rate.
We fixed σ2 ¼ 1.
4395 Conclusions
addition, if we down-sampled with rate K, we assumed it was equally likely that
the signal would begin on any of the first K time steps.
It should be noted that a downsampling rate of K implies that we only receive 1/
K as many measurements. Thus, if we sample for 1 s, our original problem would be a separation problem in 12,000, whereas the downsampled problem is a separation problem in b12,000=Kc.
As expected, the probability of successful NILM decreases with the sampling rate. In addition, the performance degrades quite quickly, and we barely per-
form better than guessing when the downsampling rate is 60 (i.e., we sample
every 5 s). This result allows us to determine a lower bound on the sampling rate necessary to achieve a certain effectiveness of NILM. It gives prescriptions
on what hardware specifications and network capacity is needed in AMIs to
achieve a certain goal.
In these examples, we considered a privacy guarantee on an adversary inferring
the state of an individual device. In practice, we may frequently need to con- sider several different combinations of devices; for more details we refer the
reader to [73, 74].
4.3 Closing Remarks on the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
In this section, we have formalized a framework for modeling the utility-privacy
tradeoff in energy systems. In addition, we instantiated this framework on a
DLC example, with load imbalance correction as a control objective. As a pri- vacy metric, we used the fundamental limits from Section 3 to bound the prob-
ability an adversary can correctly infer the in-home behaviors. We considered
how a design parameter, the sampling rate, affects both the usefulness of the collected data and the privacy of energy consumers. With this tradeoff formal-
ized, system designers can intelligently pick these design parameters based on
the utility of data and the privacy of data.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The goal of this chapter is to provide insight into the privacy risks inherent in the collection of large amounts of energy data. First, we consider the fundamen-
tal limits in the inferences that can be made as a result of this big data: this pro-
vides a theoretical bound which no algorithm can ever break due to the statistical properties of the energy disaggregation problem. Second, we intro-
duce a framework for comparing the control efficacy of collected data with
the privacy issues of high-frequency, high-resolution data. This is done in gen- erality at first, and then instantiated in a DLC example. We are able to simulate
the change in load imbalance correction error that can be attained with higher-
440 CHAPTER 18: Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
frequency samples. Similarly, we are able to analyze how the fundamental
limits of NILM are affected: we can guarantee adversaries cannot correctly infer in-home behaviors with probability higher than α. This is an example of the influence big data has on operational performance as well as privacy of con-
sumers, which is a form of analysis that will become more and more essential in the next generation of smart grid technologies.
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- Energy Disaggregation and the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
- Introduction
- Background
- Energy Disaggregation Background
- Utility-Privacy Tradeoff Background
- Fundamental Limits of NILM
- Problem Statement
- Model of Energy Disaggregation Algorithms
- Aggregate Device Model
- NILM Algorithms
- Fundamental Limits of Energy Disaggregation
- Distinguishing Two Scenarios
- Distinguishing a Finite Number of Scenarios
- Distinguishing Two Collections of Scenarios
- Gaussian Case
- Two Scenarios
- K Scenarios
- Linear Systems
- Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
- Framework
- The Utility of Data
- The Privacy of Data
- User and Data Mechanism Model
- Adversary Model
- Inferential Privacy Metric
- Example: Direct Load Control
- DLC Model
- Thermostatically Controlled Load Model
- Direct Load Control Objective
- Direct Load Control Capabilities
- Direct Load Controller
- DLC Model Simulations
- DLC Privacy Analysis
- Closing Remarks on the Utility-Privacy Tradeoff
- Conclusions
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-1---A-Holistic-Approach-to-Becoming-a_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-P.pdf
CHAPTER 1
A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
John D. McDonald GE Energy Connections-Grid Solutions, Atlanta, GA, United States
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
The ultimate goal of harnessing big data is to improve customer service and achieve enterprise busi-
ness goals while increasing the reliability, resiliency, and efficiency of operations. Thus, business drivers should dictate data needs and the technology roadmap to achieve ongoing improvements
in these areas. A data-driven utility should first identify its fundamental business drivers to under-
stand precisely what intelligence is needed for operations and the enterprise and what specific tech-
nology supports the creation of intelligence and value, both for current business challenges and for future business needs and technology functionalities. Intelligence, and automation, relies on a two-
way, integrated communication system based on standards; thus a utility must first develop a
“strong” grid by establishing an information and communications technology foundation based on an open architecture and standards. This first step requires that information technology and
communications groups work together to understand and support the functional requirements
such as network response requirements, bandwidth, and latency, of each disparate data path—from
sensor to end user—for current and future systems and applications. Then a data-driven utility should develop a “smart” grid, which requires the convergence of information technology and oper-
ations technology and their respective staffs—the beginning of an operations- and enterprise-wide
cultural shift to holistic utility management that focuses on value creation and eliminates organi-
zational silos. On the technology side, integration of data-producing devices and systems precedes automation. Determining substation automation applications relies on observing the behavior of
data over time (daily, seasonally) and diverse conditions (weather patterns). On the organization
side, all operations and enterprise groups should cooperate to identify their data needs to create a
data requirements matrix. Information and operations technology personnel can then determine the least number of platforms and the most efficient paths to route data from device to end user,
taking security into account. Access and authentication rules ensure that only the right person gets
the right data at the right time. A key concept in a data-driven utility is that every internal stake- holder who can create value from data should have secure access to that data. Operational data
is routed to the control center in real time, while nonoperational data is extracted from intelligent
electronic devices, concentrated and sent across the operations firewall to be stored and processed in
a data mart for on-demand access by enterprise groups and their applications. Three case studies illustrate the value of a data-driven utility in terms of asset management and safety, the fundamen-
tals of standards and interoperability, and the enterprise value, in dollars, of increased visibility into
the transmission and distribution network.
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00001-2
3
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
4 CHAPTER 1: A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
1 INTRODUCTION
In this digital age, power utilities must harness data to achieve the operational
and enterprise efficiencies, insights, and flexibility to thrive amid emerging technologies and disruptive market forces. The question is not whether to
become a data-driven utility, but how to do so. The opportunities and chal-
lenges are many. In the simplest terms, harnessing data in a comprehensive manner will require a transformational journey that will remake every power
utility that undertakes the challenge. The process of becoming a data-driven
utility requires a fundamental shift in organizational culture and business pro- cesses as well as data-related technology and practices. The desired result is not
limited to the creation of a more reliable, resilient, and efficient grid. This trans-
formation should also enable enterprise flexibility that supports new utility business models. Becoming a data-driven utility is an endeavor in which phi-
losophy and technology go hand in hand.
The philosophy piece is simple and three-fold. First, data should drive improve- ments in a power utility’s raison d’être. The ultimate, traditional goal of a power
utility is to serve customers by delivering power safely, efficiently, and afford-
ably. We are likely to see this fundamental mandate broaden to include cus- tomer service options, enabled by data. Harnessing data can support
improvements in customer service, enhance customer and stakeholder value
and increase the reliability, resiliency, and efficiency of operations. This is true whether a utility is cooperatively owned, municipally owned, or investor
owned. Second, the organizational and technological transformations required
to become a data-driven utility are so far-reaching that only a holistic approach will serve. Third, and most broadly, current and near-term societal and market
trends pose a challenge to utilities’ historic, regulated monopoly business and
regulatory model. If a utility wants to determine its own fate, it must be proac- tive. Data is the new enabler of value and its opportunities and challenges must
be actively embraced with a sense of urgency.
2 ALIGNING INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS
One fundamental concept in becoming a data-driven utility is that every inter-
nal stakeholder who can create value from data should have secure and timely access to that data. The very process of identifying useful data, collecting, pro-
cessing, and presenting it or making it accessible on-demand will drive cultural
and business process change throughout a utility. Creating a data-driven utility requires cooperation and coordination across all operational and enterprise
units and the recognition that silos are obsolete legacies of past practices.
53 Taking a Holistic Approach
One should not underestimate the fundamental transformation unleashed by
pursuing the goal of becoming a data-driven utility.
This observation holds true for external stakeholders as well. On the customer
side, data has also become a valuable commodity. Customers are no longer pas- sive ratepayers. Their energy use data belongs to them and, increasingly, they
expect value for it. Public utility commissions recognize that customers own
their energy use data, that utilities must secure it, and that the individual cus- tomer has the prerogative to say how that customer-specific data is used or
shared. Whether utilities use data to create service options with value to both
utility and customer may well determine their future success as an enterprise. Today, emerging technologies, third parties, and disruptive market forces
abound, seeking to provide utility customers with value and service options
based on their energy use data. For utilities, data has become not only the means to thrive but also the means to survive.
3 TAKING A HOLISTIC APPROACH
A holistic, methodical approach to becoming a data-driven utility has several
common, recognizable steps, though the outcome for any individual utility will likely be unique, due to its existing customer base, business model, and legacy
infrastructure. In this introductory chapter and overview of the topic, we will
examine the implications of a holistic approach, the technology-related phases it requires, and connect the dots between data-producing sensor and data-
reliant end user. A brief synopsis of three case studies will illustrate many of
these points.
A holistic approach to becoming a data-driven utility literally takes everything
into account. It views transmission and distribution as a single integrated entity. It encompasses the operations and business of delivering power to cus-
tomers in a manner that achieves customer engagement and satisfaction based
on increased system reliability, resiliency, and efficiency. Built on a foundation of open architecture and standards, a holistic approach ensures interoperability
between devices, systems, and databases. It enables value creation at opera-
tional and enterprise levels. It enables forward and backward compatibility to derive full value from current and future investments in technology while
maintaining the value of legacy equipment. In terms of an end-to-end system,
a holistic approach provides a means by which all data-producing devices— increasingly, nearly every device in a T&D system—can be mapped to commu-
nication channels and networks with the appropriate response requirements,
routed to both operations and enterprise sides of the organization, and pre- sented and/or made accessible on-demand to the right people in the right time
and place for value creation.
6 CHAPTER 1: A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
A holistic approach aligns customer needs and expectations with utility busi-
ness drivers and depends on a technology roadmap for grid modernization that supports this alignment. In terms of utility culture and organization, a holistic
approach eliminates silos and demands utility-wide cooperation and coordina-
tion to avoid redundant systems and costs. Thus it provides the basis for pru- dent, well-vetted investments that will create customer and stakeholder value
and benefits that increase over time, meet future needs, and are likely to win
regulatory approval.
In an era in which the utility business model requires review and transforma-
tion and digital technology produces an increasing granularity, quality, and quantity of data, a holistic approach to becoming a data-driven utility offers
the richest opportunity for success.
4 “STRONG” FIRST, THEN “SMART”
Aligning customer needs and expectations with utility operational and business
drivers should dictate how data is generated, collected, stored, processed, pre- sented, or accessed, and how actionable intelligence is applied. A data-driven
utility should review its current and mid-term operational and business models
and identify its customer needs and fundamental business drivers. This will help in understanding precisely what actionable intelligence—and, thus,
data—is needed for both operations and the enterprise to meet its self-
determined goals of improving customer service and pursuing value creation.
To optimize current practices and enable future flexibility in reaching ope-
rations and enterprise goals, a utility must first develop a “strong” grid before
pursuing a “smart” grid. This can only be achieved by establishing an informa- tion and communications technology (ICT) foundation based on open archi-
tecture and industry standards. The development of operational intelligence (and automation) and enterprise value relies on a two-way, standards-based,
integrated communication system [1].
This first step requires that information technology (IT) and communications groups work together to understand and support the functional requirements
(response requirements, bandwidth, latency) of each disparate data path—
from sensor to end user—for current and future systems and applications. This approach requires organization-wide cooperation, which is no small feat.
Enabling this fundamental cultural shift requires executive leadership, poten-
tially third-party facilitation, and incentives that reward personnel for organization-wide and customer value creation rather than for individual staff
and bailiwick-level achievements.
A foundational ICT platform that links all operational and enterprise aspects
of a utility is a prerequisite for enterprise-wide data management. This ICT
74 “Strong” First, Then “Smart”
platform should support full information flow, data management and
analytics, and grid monitoring and control. It also comprises the basis for future functionalities that potentially include new consumer services, the
integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) and other, yet-to-
be-determined needs. The efficacy of this phased approach—seeking a “strong” grid before a “smart” grid—has been affirmed by lessons learned
from the stimulus-funded work accomplished under the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) between 2009 and the present. One simple example illustrates this point.
ARRA funding opportunities allowed many utilities to adopt advanced meter- ing infrastructure (AMI). Some of these utilities took a traditional approach by
assigning AMI implementation to their metering group alone. As these same
utilities later contemplated the implementation of distribution automation (DA), they compounded their original mistake by assigning DA to a distribu-
tion engineering group in operations [2].
The direction is positive, but the execution is flawed. DA is the next logical step
in grid modernization after AMI and it has the most attractive, stand-alone (i.e.,
nonsubsidized) business case. But these utilities are finding that their earlier decisions on data networks and IT infrastructure to support AMI do not support
DA integration or that implementing DA requires a costly, disruptive work-
around. In a holistic approach to data management, all operational and enter- prise units would openly discuss their future direction and related projects and
set foundational ICT requirements to serve them all. This fundamental step
would eliminate redundant efforts and costs—and the creation of two separate data streams—because two or more systems in this example share a need for a
service territory-wide communication network. Extrapolate this single example
across a utility’s many networks, systems, and applications and extend it into the future along a well-plotted technology roadmap. Although it requires
daunting cultural change and significant up-front time and effort, a holistic
approach ultimately saves time, effort, and money and provides ever-increasing benefits to a future-facing, data-driven utility. In contrast, as this example illus-
trates, a fragmented, piecemeal approach is likely to result in stranded assets or,
at best, time-consuming, costly workarounds at each step in a technology roadmap.
Once a strong ICT foundation has been established, a data-driven utility can
proceed to develop a “smart” grid and to map data from sensor to end user. This next step requires the convergence of IT and operations technology
(OT) and their respective staffs—the beginning of an operations- and enterprise-wide cultural shift to holistic utility management that focuses on
customer-stakeholder-centric value creation and eliminates organizational
silos and siloed thinking.
8 CHAPTER 1: A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
Guidelines for a holistic approach to becoming a data-driven utility:
• Align internal and external stakeholders.
• Think in terms of holistic solutions across the organization.
• Build a strong grid first, with robust ICT performance, then build a smart one.
5 INCREASING VISIBILITY WITH IEDs
As readers know, sensors, processing, and the visibility they produce have been
applied to the transmission system for some time. The real growth in the need
for visibility is downstream in the distribution system, where data-producing sensors and devices in the form of intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) are pro-
liferating. The proliferation of IEDs in the distribution system is enabling util-
ities to treat T&D as a single entity and is a major enabler for the transformation to a data-driven utility. Yet a lack of visibility in the distribution system remains
widespread; for example, only two-thirds of the distribution substations in the
United States currently have automation.
IEDs can take the form of standalone sensors or they can be data-producing
substation protection and control equipment such as protective relays, load tap changers, and voltage regulators. They produce two streams of data: oper-
ational and nonoperational. Operational data is routed in real time to opera-
tors in control centers for monitoring and control purposes (see Fig. 1, Types of data: “operational” data). Nonoperational data can provide significant insights
• Data that represents the real-time status, performance, and loading of power system equipment • This is the fundamental information used by system operators to monitor and control the power system Examples: • Circuit breaker open/closed status • Line current (amperes) • Bus voltages • Transformer loading (real and reactive power) • Substation alarms (high temperature, low pressure, intrusion)
Types of data: “operational” data
FIG. 1
Types of data: “operational” data. From J.D. McDonald, Powerpoint presentation, Enterprise Data
Management, slide # 5.
• Data items for which the primary user is someone other than the system operators (engineering, maintenance, etc.) • Note that operators are usually interested in some data that is classified as nonoperational Examples of “Nonoperational” data: • Digital fault recorder records (waveforms) (protection engineer) • Circuit breaker contact wear indicator (maintenance) • Dissolved gas/moisture content in oil (maintenance)
Types of data: “Nonoperational” data
FIG. 2
Types of data: “nonoperational” data. From J.D. McDonald, Powerpoint presentation, Enterprise Data
Management, slide # 6.
95 Increasing Visibility With IEDs
for value creation, if properly routed, stored, processed, and made accessible on-demand to both operations personnel and to a utility’s enterprise units
for use with their applications (see Fig. 2, Types of data: “nonoperational”
data). Specifically, nonoperational data can inform enterprise goals for energy efficiency, load shaping, and capital deferral. Metering data, another form of
nonoperational data, can support programs aimed at energy efficiency and reli-
ability such as demand response and dynamic pricing [3]. To better understand the defining characteristics of both types of data, see Fig. 3, Characteristics of
operational & nonoperational data.
The value of nonoperational data and an example of how it can be overlooked is represented by a protective relay. (See the second bullet point under Exam-
ples of nonoperational data, in Fig. 2, Types of data: “nonoperational” data.)
A utility’s protection group typically buys and installs protective relays for their operational role in detecting faults and tripping circuit breakers. But every IED-
enabled relay generates two types of data valuable to the utility’s maintenance
group. As a fault is detected by a relay, the latter opens a breaker to isolate the fault and quench the arc associated with the opening breaker. The level of
energy associated with that arc is captured by the formula i2t, which is the square of the current (i) flowing through the breaker when the contacts open,
multiplied by the time (t) it takes to extinguish the arc. The i2t data, combined
with the breaker’s operations counter (how many times it has operated), can tell maintenance when that breaker is due for service. The actual values that
indicate a need for maintenance action will vary by the breaker’s make and
model. But if the protection group or the utility enterprise is not aware of
Characteristic Operational data Nonoperational data
Data format Usually limited to individual time sequenced data items
Usually a data file that consists of a collection of related data elements
Real time vs historical Usually consists of real-time or near real-time quantities
Mostly historical data: trends over time
Data integration Easily transportable by conventional SCADA RTUs using standard (non proprietary) protocols
Typically use vendor specific (proprietary) formats that are not easily transported_ by SCADA communication protocols
FIG. 3
Characteristics of operational & nonoperational data. From J.D. McDonald, Powerpoint presentation,
Enterprise Data Management, slide # 7.
10 CHAPTER 1: A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
the value of that nonoperational data, the maintenance group typically will ser-
vice the breaker based on time schedules unrelated to its actual condition or when the device fails. Fix-on-fail, of course, is the antithesis of proactive,
data-driven asset management [4], so this example underscores the value of
nonoperational data and that enterprise users must have ready access to it. Speaking of value, the business case for IEDs themselves only makes sense
when both data streams are fully exploited. IEDs range in cost from $5000 to $10,000 apiece and typically they are implemented by the hundreds. But per- haps as much as 75% of their potential value is unrealized if their nonopera-
tional data is not fully utilized.
Every IED has a number of “points” that produce either operational or nono-
perational data. The collection of points in a particular IED may be thought of
as a “data map.” Each IED and its data map must be matched with one or more communication network(s) that provide the response requirements appropri-
ate to the data being transmitted. Operational and nonoperational data each
have their own set of communication network response requirements, worthy of a brief review here [5].
6 NETWORK RESPONSE REQUIREMENTS
To make functional sense and support a positive business case, communication
networks should be designed to meet the priorities and quality of the data they
carry. As different data streams rely on a variety of response requirements, a util- ity may mix and match various communication networks to achieve diverse
functionalities and cost-effectiveness.
117 Integration Before Automation
IEDs’ real-time operational data typically demands the most stringent response
requirements, which include reliability, redundancy, speed, latency, band- width, throughput, and cybersecurity. That holds true whether the medium
is redundant fiber optic cable laid in rings around a service territory, wireless
microwave, or UHF. Still, operational data is heterogeneous and lends itself to a mix-and-match approach to corresponding communication networks.
For example, “smart” interval meters record data at 15 min intervals. Integrated
Volt/VAr Control (IVVC) requires only 30–60 s to switching on distribution feeder-based capacitor banks. In contrast, Fault Detection, Isolation and service
Restoration (FDIR) requires a 2 s response.
Operational data typically has been and is likely to continue to travel over fiber
optic networks. The use of licensed wireless spectrum for substations upstream
of the “last mile” may also provide a cost-effective network solution. And unli- censed spread-spectrum technology can provide a cost-effective solution for
rural “last mile” networks where interference is unlikely.
As mentioned, nonoperational data offers the enterprise a wealth of valuable
information that supports the IED business case and is indispensable to a
data-driven utility. As noted, nonoperational data can support a shift from time-based to condition-based asset management and it can aid value creation
by planning, power quality, asset management, maintenance, engineering, and
other enterprise units.
The salient consideration in determining the response requirements of nono-
perational data in a communication network is bandwidth, because a digitized
waveform, for example, may require a “fat pipe” to reach the enterprise uncor- rupted. Speed, latency, and other metrics are of less importance because non-
operational data is often used for after-the-fact analysis and event forensics.
Nonoperational data is also heterogeneous, with lower response requirements and security demands than operational data, so it can also benefit from a mix-
and-match approach to communication networks.
7 INTEGRATION BEFORE AUTOMATION
Integrating IEDs across the substation and on distribution feeders means prop- erly assigning each data stream to the appropriate communication network and
routing those data streams to the control center and/or the enterprise. This is a
critical step because IEDs are now synonymous with nearly every piece of power system equipment, including protective relays, meters, transformers, circuit
breakers, reclosers, load tap changer controls, voltage regulators, etc.
The accompanying Fig. 4 provides a graphic representation of the integration
challenge. The foundation is power system equipment such as transformers
Utility enterprise
Substation automation applications
IED integration
IED implementation
Power system equipment (transformers, breakers)
FIG. 4
Five levels of substation integration and automation. From J.D. McDonald, Substation automation,
IEEE Power Energy Mag. (March/April 2003).
12 CHAPTER 1: A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
and circuit breakers. The next levels include IED implementation, IED integra- tion, and substation automation (SA) applications. The enterprise comprises
the fifth and highest level.
In the past, IED integration has too often focused exclusively on operational
data such as instantaneous values of voltage, current, and related data, while
overlooking nonoperational data and its value. The latter can include on-demand or event-triggered data of logs of events and oscillography that aids
diagnostics and forensics on conditions that lead to major events such as
outages or equipment failures [6].
Distribution system integration requires that the utility tie together protection,
control, and data acquisition functions using the minimum possible number of
platforms, thus reducing capital and O&M costs, physical footprint, and elim- inating redundant equipment and databases. The integration of data-
producing devices and systems precedes SA. Determining SA applications relies
on first observing the behavior of data over time (daily, seasonally) and diverse conditions (weather patterns) to arrive at rational, data-based establishment of
threshold values that trigger automated responses. SA simply refers to imple-
menting SCADA, alarm processing, and other elements to optimize asset man- agement and operational efficiencies that operate without human intervention.
8 FUNCTIONAL DATA PATHS: KEEP IT SIMPLE
The functional data path for operational data typically sends real-time data on voltage, amps, etc., to the utility’s SCADA system every 2–4 s for dispatchers who monitor and control the power system. Ideally, SCADA would also pull
nonoperational data from IEDs and route it to data concentrators at the sub- station level. Then that nonoperational data can be routed over its own com-
munication network(s), across the corporate firewall to data repositories within
the enterprise. Business units and personnel, on an authorized basis, can then retrieve needed data on-demand through queries and data mining on the cor-
porate network.
Utility enterprise
Nonoperational data to data warehouse
Substation automation applications
IED integration
IED implementation
Power system equipment (transformers, breakers)
Remote access to IED Operational data to nonoperational
data to SCADA system
FIG. 5
Three functional data paths from substation to utility enterprise. From J.D. McDonald, Substation
automation, IEEE Power Energy Mag. (March/April 2003).
139 From Sensor To End User: The Process
Note that the physical media involved within a substation requires consider-
ation. IED integration must address legacy equipment. Adding Ethernet con- nections to serial communications within a substation produces a hybrid
configuration that may not lend itself to full integration. This potential hurdle
is moot if the fundamental ICT platform is in place.
Fig. 5 illustrates three functional data paths from substation to the utility enter-
prise: the two paths most relevant here are operational data going to the SCADA system, and nonoperational data heading across the operations firewall to a
data warehouse within the enterprise. In the latter case, we must now address
how the establishment of a data warehouse and, more importantly, a “data mart,” is at once a technical, organizational, and cultural challenge [5].
9 FROM SENSOR TO END USER: THE PROCESS
Because the routing and use of operational data is likely to be long familiar to
readers, our focus here will remain on the routing and availability of nonopera-
tional data. Though this challenge certainly has a technical component, we must begin with the heavy lifting: people working with people, across legacy
silos, for the greater good. This is a step that a data-driven utility cannot avoid.
Indeed, if properly understood and implemented, the result will unlock signif- icant value in resolving business challenges, allow a shift to a more effective
and less costly condition-based maintenance approach, and support future
functionalities. This step also leads to cultural and organizational and business process changes, so it is a fundamentally transformative process that, once
unleashed, is irreversible.
In designing an informational architecture to deliver nonoperational data to
the authorized enterprise individual or unit for value creation, one must create
an enterprise-wide “data requirements matrix.” This initial step involves query- ing business unit managers on the question of who in their bailiwick needs
nonoperational data; specifically, what type of data, in what form, and at what
14 CHAPTER 1: A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
specific time intervals. This step should be supported by presenting an inven-
tory of the IEDs and their data maps (the collection of data-producing points on each IED) so that business managers understand what is available to serve
their needs. These managers may need technical assistance to properly under-
stand what they can do with this potentially new source of data, using proces- sing, applications, and presentation technology. The purpose of the exercise
must be made clear. Enterprise-centric value creation is the goal, not the use
of data to support individual or business unit achievements. Silo walls should crumble, not be reinforced.
The inventory of distribution IEDs will include their data maps and attributes and the next step is to determine which points in each data map can serve value
creation by stakeholders in the enterprise. This is a complex step. Vendors now
differentiate their IEDs by taking sometimes unique approaches to the produc- tion of nonoperational data. The attributes associated with each IED data point
might differ among devices by different vendors; thus they must be carefully
documented. The data sampling rate might vary, IED to IED. An end user might seek a peak value or an average value for each hour of data retrieved. An event
might drive an attribute. Data might only be of value when it exceeds a preset
threshold. We typically refer to these attributes as the “aspect of value.” The key is determining what data the IED produces and the “aspect of value” to the
end user.
Once we have the IED template—the sensors and their data maps—and the
data requirements matrix—who needs which data and its attributes—mapping
the source to the end user informs the network architecture that delivers non- operational data across the corporate firewall into a data repository/warehouse,
where the right person can access the right data on demand. Rigor and accuracy
in this phase is critical to a successful outcome, and to future IED additions. When additional IEDs are installed on the distribution network, they are sim-
ply added to the existing template, matrix, and map.
Utilities often rely on a number of physical data repositories, which remain use- ful in the data mart scenario described here. A federated data server can sit atop
and access these potentially disparate, legacy repositories, creating a “virtual
data mart,” which includes both operational and nonoperational data. Fig. 6 illustrates a typical, siloed approach to data management (left) and how that
can be transformed (right) so that authorized users across the utility organiza-
tion can access both operational and nonoperational data.
We have described how nonoperational data is gathered and routed to the
enterprise. If operational data is needed, the enterprise end user can access it on-demand from the virtual data mart, which has received the data from the
operations (SCADA) historian. The historian has been recording a time series
of data at a predetermined sampling rate—a subset of all operational data—for
Operational users
Operational boundary
Files Files
Operational data +
Nonoperational data +
Remote access +
Security
Data
(A) (B)
Operational data Limited nonoperational data Full nonoperational data
Data
Data Data
Federated data mart
Analytics
E xi
st in
g
Repositories Repositories
Legend: IEDs
Grid operational systems
SCADA, EMS, DMS
Grid operational systems
SCADA, EMS, DMS
Substation / feeder IEDs
N o
n o p e
ra tio
n a
l d a
ta (l im
ite d ) Nonoperational data
(improved flow)
O p e ra
tio n a
l d a
ta
Nonoperational users Nonoperational usersOperational users
Improved value
Operational efficiency Grid reliability
Asset life extension
Today: Limited nonoperational data access Proposed: Cross-functional, enterprise system
IT/OT convergence and data access
FIG. 6
The siloed arrangement on the left is typical of many utilities’ suboptimal approach to data management, which limits access to nonoperational data. On the right, all
devices, systems, and data repositories feed into a federated data mart (FDM), which enables organization-wide access to both operational and nonoperational data for
improved decision-making. IT/OT convergence and data access. From J.D. McDonald Powerpoint presentation, Enterprise Data Management, slide # 13.
1 5
9 F ro
m S e n s o r T o E n d U s e r:
T h e P ro
c e s s
16 CHAPTER 1: A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
export to the enterprise. End users typically retrieve data on-demand by using
an application on the corporate network [7].
Thus the holistic approach to becoming a data-driven utility touted throughout
this chapter ensures that both operators and enterprise users get authorized access to both operational and nonoperational data either in real time or on
demand (Fig. 7). Multifactor authentication and internal controls ensure that
only the right people access the data they are permitted to access. Other security controls in the data mart ensure that the data residing there is reliable and
accurate.
10 CONSUMERS/CUSTOMERS: ANOTHER SOURCE OF DATA
Let us make a brief digression to examine another source of valuable data that
might be classified as nonoperational data but is simply data generated by util- ity customers themselves. As a data-driven utility engages its customers—as it
must—harnessing customers’ social media-driven data to improve reliability
indices will become commonplace.
In the past, a utility relied on customers to phone in information on outages.
Either verbally or by searching the customer record for the customer’s address, the utility could get a sense of the outage’s location and dimensions. Today,
landline phones are disappearing and they have been completely abandoned
by millennials, who form the next generation of customers.
Now, with the widespread use of mobile social media, a customer tweet or clus-
ter of customer tweets can provide similar information more swiftly and accu-
rately. A utility can incentivize its customers to link their Twitter tags to their account information so that a tweet to a utility provides the old landline-
generated data. Customers who turn on their mobile device’s geo-tagging func-
tion can deliver the GPS coordinates of their location if they are not home and see the cause of an outage that may or may not directly affect them.
In both cases, newly available applications can connect tweets or other social media-generated data to an outage management system that triggers DA appli-
cations such as FDIR, which can materially affect SAIDI (System Average Inter-
ruption Duration Index) and SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index) indices. These applications can use text mining to assess whether a flurry
of tweets that mention “outage” and “power,” for example, actually refers to a
power outage. As more customers participate, the utility benefits accordingly. It is impossible to quantify or generalize the potential impact of using customers’
social media on SAIDI and SAIFI indices, because outage factors are so
Asset mgmt
Users roles:
Personalized portal
New
32
Maintenance
Power quality
Engineers
Planners
E n
te rp
ri s
e B
u s
Designers
Managers
Executives
Marketers
Customers
Relay technicians
Field staff
Federated data mart
Data in FDM:
WAN
lED op-data
Application server
Enterprise information management center
Nonoperational
data management
system
Firewall
FDM
Firewall
Enterprise data bus
1
E n
te rp
ri s
e b
u s
EMS
Control center
Modem
Modem
Substation(s) Router
Firewall
Master DC
Slave DC
IED
Slave DC
SCADA network
GOS (grid operational system)
DMS
OMS Router
lED nonop-data
Sub meter data
SCADA data
Outage data Op data path Nonop data path
Remote access path Weather data
M&D data
IED IED
IED IED
IED IED
IED
Realizing greater value from data
FIG. 7
Realizing greater value from data. This illustration depicts how myriad data sources ideally feed both a control center and an enterprise information management center.
On the enterprise side, data in an FDM (examples in horizontal boxes at near-right) can be readily accessed for value creation by diverse end users (user roles in horizontal
boxes at far right). From J.D. McDonald, Powerpoint presentation, Enterprise Data Management, slide # 14.
1 7
1 0
C o n s u m e rs /C
u s to m e rs : A n o th e r S o u rc e O f D a ta
18 CHAPTER 1: A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
dependent on a specific utility, where it is located and its own set of problem-
atic circuits.
Crowdsourcing as a means of identifying the location and extent of outages has
several advantages. Swifter, more efficient outage responses can improve reli- ability indices; fewer truck rolls save time, money, and environmental impacts.
Last, but not least, studies show that engaged customers are more satisfied cus-
tomers and engaging your customers to reduce the frequency and duration of outages has obvious benefits for customer service and satisfaction. Just the shift
in customer demographics toward millennials and their abandonment of land-
line phones and embrace of social media virtually guarantees that crowdsour- cing outages will become a common practice.
Thereisalotmoretounderstandingandimplementingthisparticulardatastream,
but it should be mentioned as a significant future trend. Perhaps even more nascent is the technology and resulting data streams potentially gleaned from
consumer home energy management systems. These appear inevitable, though their commercialization to date has experienced decidedly mixed results [8].
11 EXTRACTING VALUE FROM DATA, AND PRESENTING IT
Now let us return our attention to more traditional, nonoperational data. Data,
of course, must be processed to create value, insights, or actionable intelligence. Processing can occur in situ at the IED level, at the data concentrator level and/or
at a desktop level—known as a “host processor”—within the substation. In situ
processing helps manage and ease the data traffic sent upstream for central pro- cessing. Or, as just noted, processing can be applied later via applications on the
corporate network. At that stage, processing can take the form of a calculation, a software application, and/or a logic application. On the enterprise side, business
unit managers and their staff need to understand and carefully select
applications—either developed in-house or purchased from a third party—that turn data and information into actionable business intelligence.
By linking the IED template with the data requirements matrix, we have routed
the right data to the data mart and set-up authorized access for the right people to make data queries and/or perform data mining. Finally, with IT or third-
party assistance, the business unit manager steering the process will likely
participate in crafting how outputs can be delivered. Visualization aids under- standing and, thus, dashboards increasingly are being used to make processed
data more easily apprehensible.
The visualization of intelligence gleaned from data is critical and it is an area in
progress. This is true of both operational and nonoperational data presentation.
1913 Three Case Studies
Nooneshouldbestaringattables ofnumbers.Instead,forexample,color-coded
lines or bars can instantly tell the user that a threshold value has been exceeded andinstantlyandintuitivelyconveycriticalintelligence.This isanareaofintense
interest and value that will mature over time [7].
12 THE TRANSFORMATION
It is difficult to generalize how de-siloing and a horizontal approach to data
needs and applications will affect a given utility. But a few obvious points
are worth making.
No individual operational unit should add technology without review by all
operational and enterprise units, because the resulting system may serve mul-
tiple needs and purposes and redundancy of systems and efforts—unless aimed at security—is no longer justifiable. Any new device, technology, or system is
likely to generate operational and nonoperational data and that data must
be incorporated into the utility-wide data maps, data requirements matrix, and data mart created under a holistic approach. In a digital, data-driven utility,
IT and OT, traditionally leery of one another, must collaborate. In similar fash-
ion, enterprise units and their managers and staff must share data-driven insights with one another to ensure the widest impact of value creation.
In fact, it is likely that a utility embarked upon becoming a data-driven utility will need neutral, third-party assistance in guiding both cultural and organiza-
tional transformations and business process change. New incentives to drive
new behaviors may be needed. Managers and staff may be rewarded based on their devotion to and achievements in pan-organizational cooperation
and value creation.
It has been said that fostering cultural change is far more difficult than imple- menting new technology. So keep in mind that becoming a data-driven utility is
hardly all about technology. Human interoperability is just as important as
technology interoperability [5].
13 THREE CASE STUDIES
It is important to understand that the foregoing guidance, though stated in con-
ceptual terms, is not pie-in-the-sky theory. The process described here for becoming a data-driven utility has been successfully implemented in different
ways based on different drivers at a variety of utilities. Of course, in the real
world, adding new or upgraded technology often involves preserving legacy investments, which sometimes requires complex solutions. Thus, we will con-
clude this opening chapter by looking at three utilities and how they have
20 CHAPTER 1: A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
successfully managed and applied data and related insights to solve real-world
challenges. These three case studies illustrate the value of a data-driven utility in terms of asset management and safety, the fundamentals of standards and inter-
operability and the enterprise value, in hard dollars, of increased visibility into
the transmission and distribution network [9]. To achieve that value, each util- ity had to embrace one or more of the guidelines for data-driven success: align
internal and external stakeholders, think in terms of holistic solutions across
the organization, and first build a strong grid (i.e., one with robust ICT capa- bilities) before building a smart one. The holistic approach is certainly prom-
inent in achieving all three solutions.
13.1 Frankfort, Kentucky, and Greenfield SCADA, SA
A SCADA-related project in Frankfort, Kentucky, illustrates the importance and
value of integrating legacy and new equipment and the efficacy of a single user interface.
In the late 1990s, the Frankfort Electric and Water Plant Board (FEWPB) had SCADA plans on hold due to budget constraints when a distribution substation
transformer exploded, leading to a significant outage and related costs. Fortu-
nately, no one was injured. The cause: an internal failure in a single-phase reg- ulator had led to erratic voltage fluctuations and, eventually, an explosion,
putting thousands of customers out of service. One was a neighbor whose lights
had been acting funny. He had thought of calling FEWPB, but did not [10].
Suddenly, a SCADA system and integrated SA was top of mind. Automation to
this point had been limited to a set of electro-mechanical and microprocessor-
based protective relays. So FEWPB embarked on a dual implementation of SCADA system and integrated SA aimed at improving system reliability, accel-
erating outage restoration and reducing O&M costs.
Although at that time a lack of SCADA and SA was not uncommon, implement-
ing these technologies in an essentially greenfield situation presented FEWPB
with somewhat unique opportunities and challenges. One positive: the utility did not have to integrate new SCADA and SA technologies with a legacy system.
Another: FEWPB could develop an architecture that thoroughly networked and
integrated the SCADA master and all the utility’s 19 substations. A consultant provided an enterprise-wide seminar on SCADA/SA capabilities to introduce
the technologies and their capabilities to the utility’s relevant personnel.
The utility decided to design a single user interface for both systems, accessible
at several locations, including its primary dispatch center, its network opera-
tions center (NOC), and several of its largest substations. The unified design meant that several departments could run the system (remotely, if needed)
and this also simplified training. Although a work-around could have
2113 Three Case Studies
accommodated the utility’s existing array of relays, the utility decided to replace
them with new IEDs that produced greater amounts of data and offered better protection at less cost. Sourcing the IEDs from one vendor enabled FEWPB to
adopt a standardized data approach that could be applied to all substations.
Having determined its approach to data-generating IEDs, SCADA, and SA, the
utility addressed its communication network. Because FEWPB provided a suite
of services to its municipal customers—including cable, phone, and Internet— it already had a fiber-optic ring around the city based on Synchronous Optical
Network (SONET) technology. This would be ideal for SCADA communica-
tions, if not suitable for protection purposes. The fiber ring’s backbone pro- vided 100 Mbps transmission capacity at the substations, which could easily
handle operational and nonoperational data streams and files.
The SONET network already connected the utility’s NOC and its primary dis- patch center, and geographically convenient network hubs ran lower capacity
network lines to connect neighborhoods to the main ring for cable, phone, and Internet, which substations could piggyback on. Thus the utility’s existing fiber
ring could be leveraged and designed into the overall SCADA/SA system and
reduce costs for the SA part of the project.
To contain costs, FEWPB and its consultant decided to designate six large or
new substations as primary substations, which would receive a full suite of
IEDs, PCs, or workstations and all SCADA/SA interface components. Another 10 secondary substations would be equipped with only IEDs, integrated with
the SA system data concentrator, and linked by fiber to their nearest primary
substation. The secondary to primary substation link would transmit data col- lected from the IEDs and data concentrator to the primary substation for anal-
ysis at the SCADA/SA interface. Both primary and secondary substation data
would then be sent upstream to the SCADA master over the SONET network.
In seeking a vendor to meet its needs, FEWPB required an open system that
relied on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software. The utility initially employed a request for information (RFI) process to generate the great-
est interest and favorable, competitive pricing, then moved to the request for
proposal (RFP) phase. The project was completed over several years as budgets allowed the inclusion of additional substations.
13.2 Ketchikan, Alaska, Deals With Unsupported, Legacy RTUs
A SCADA-related project in Ketchikan, Alaska, clearly illustrates why proprie-
tary technology and protocols can lead to costly dead ends.
Ketchikan Public Utilities (KPU) in the 1990s found itself in an unenviable
position: its SCADA master station and RTU vendor from the 1980s had gone
22 CHAPTER 1: A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
out of business and left KPU without support for the vendor’s SCADA system,
partly based on a proprietary communication protocol [11].
Compounding the issue of support, KPU sought in 1999 to expand its substa-
tion data collection by replacing RTUs with PLCs. In this case, at that time, the PLC choice made sense as they could handle analog and status inputs and con-
trol outputs and serve as a platform for SA. But the PLCs would have to talk to
the SCADA system over the defunct vendor’s proprietary protocol, just as the RTUs had.
KPU managed to find an experienced integrator of SA components, which dec-
iphered the proprietary protocol and programmed its own communication processor box, designed for IED integration and SA. The communication pro-
cessor box became a slave unit responding to commands from the SCADA mas-
ter station and a master station to the PLCs—sending commands, retrieving data, and transmitting data back to the SCADA system. The PLC solution
worked, but it was costly due to a large number of hard-wired input/output points and the absence of IEDs, which could send and receive the same data
digitally.
Over the course of a few years, KPU implemented this strategy in half its distri- bution substations. But in the middle of the project the utility realized it needed
to replace its SCADA master station, which was difficult to support and had
reached its data point limit. And the utility knew it would explore an expansion by tying into another power grid to its north, ultimately to provide power to
visiting cruise ships, which otherwise would continue to run their diesel
engines while in port, unnecessarily polluting the air for visitors and residents.
Here is where geography and service territory factors came into play. Ketchikan
is a small town on an island located in far southeastern Alaska. The mountain- ous terrain means that substations only 20 miles away require hours of driving
by truck and, in one case, is only accessible by floatplane. If KPU connected
with the grid to the north, the resulting topology and grid could be most effi- ciently and remotely operated from a central control location in Ketchikan. Just
to meet its existing data needs, let alone position itself as a regional control cen-
ter, KPU needed to upgrade or replace its SCADA system.
KPU researched SCADA and SA technology, and it hired a consultant experi-
enced in utility automation projects. Together they determined that imple-
menting IEDs, which had become more common since KPU’s original RTU- related project in the 1980s, made sense. Fewer IEDs could replace many more
PLCs at markedly lower cost, while providing more effective data producing and processing capabilities.
In considering a new SCADA master station, KPU wisely determined that it
would only invest in one that ran the DNP3 protocol, then a de facto industry
2313 Three Case Studies
standard. To avoid losing its investment in seven substations that used the
reverse-engineered proprietary protocol of its defunct vendor, the utility discov- ered that those communication processor boxes could easily be converted back
to their original DNP3 protocol. For communicating with RTUs that remained
in place, the utility’s new vendor built a converter into its communication pro- cessor box that enabled it to receive DNP3 commands from the new SCADA
master station and convert those commands to the proprietary protocol
required by the RTUs. The process worked in reverse as well for data heading upstream. When KPU had the budget to replace its remaining RTUs, the com-
munication processors running the proprietary protocol could be converted
to DNP3.
KPU’s research and determination to avoid proprietary solutions and protocols
paid off. The result was a system running on an industry standard that cost about a third of its proprietary system, preserved legacy investments in a
phased-in approach governed by its budget, and produced an enhanced ability
to send and receive data in support of its SCADA system and SA. The utility could look forward, as well, to lower O&M costs through remote monitoring
and control and position itself for future expansion.
13.3 North Carolina Agency Pursues New SCADA, Boosts Revenue
A SCADA-related case in North Carolina demonstrates that upgrading or repla- cing a SCADA system should be considered an investment rather than a cost.
Investments in becoming a data-driven utility should be based on a positive
business case. As the North Carolina Municipal Power Agency No. 1 (NCMPA 1) discovered over a decade ago, advancements in SCADA technology
have enabled some utilities to replace their existing systems with a rapid ROI, even boosting profits along the way [12].
At the turn of the 21st century, NCMPA 1 had been distributing power on
behalf of municipal utilities across North Carolina for two decades. For three quarters of the year, its system experienced peak load of about 600–650 MW, about 250 MW below generation capacity. It sold the excess power on the
wholesale market through a power marketing and trading company.
NCMPA 1 installed a SCADA system in 1996 to monitor its distribution system.
The utility installed more than four dozen meters to measure instantaneous power and energy usage at 47 substations across the Piedmont region of North
Carolina. Each metering site featured RTUs that recorded, processed, and for-
matted the meter data based on DNP3 and transmitted it to the SCADA master station at NCMPA 10s headquarters in Raleigh, N.C. A frame relay system pro- vided a reliable 56 kbps (kilobits per second) link between substations and the
24 CHAPTER 1: A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
control center. The SCADA master station polled the RTUs for load data once
every 5 min. The SCADA system transmitted both peak load and generation data via FTP—in 1 h increments via “block scheduling”—to the power market-
ing and trading company for near real-time insights into the availability of
excess capacity.
Unfortunately, the SCADA system over time exhibited reliability issues tied to
local thunderstorms, which led to forecasting errors on excess capacity. NCMPA 10s use of “block scheduling” in 1 h increments added to the inaccuracy of fore- casts. To compensate, NCMPA 1 personnel kept unsold power in reserve, to
ensure meeting load, which translated to about 25 MW/h of lost revenue.
NCMPA 1 clearly needed to upgrade or replace its SCADA system. And it
decided to move to “dynamic scheduling” that would eliminate related errors
in forecasting produced by block scheduling. The latter required control area quality SCADA with 4 s scan rate telemetry, more in line with industry average
performance. The utility decided the most cost-effective and forward-looking approach would be to replace its SCADA system and, with a consultant, it
set about identifying operating parameters and hardware components that
could be replaced with newer, more advanced technologies for improved per- formance and under a relatively tight budget.
The utility and its consultant determined that the SCADA master station would
need replacing with one capable of a four-second scan rate and—mindful of budget constraints—that the frame relay system in use could support that rate.
The substation meters would be replaced by more accurate and efficient IEDs,
linked through frame relay access devices (FRADs) to the communications sys- tem, and eliminating a role for the error-prone RTUs. The IEDs used DNP3, a
protocol that ensured a more seamless data flow across the system.
The utility and its consultant also decided to make the SCADA system redun-
dant for reliability and resiliency by splitting the master station between two
locations linked by high-speed T1 lines. Dial-up communications to each meter site were established as a communications backup.
In its system requirements, codified in its RFP, NCMPA 1 insisted on the use of
standards to ensure interoperability. When the utility selected its vendor, it par- ticipated in factory tests of the hardware and software, to ensure it met NCMPA
10s specifications and to allow its personnel to become familiar with the new system’s O&M needs. This step served as practical training for the utility’s SCADA-related personnel.
Once in successful operation, the new SCADA system and related dynamic scheduling allowed the utility to operate without that costly 25 MW buffer.
The system’s increased accuracy allowed the utility to negotiate a more favor-
able contract with a new power marketing company. The utility also
2514 Conclusion
experienced greater operational efficiencies. All these factors contributed to ROI
within an astonishing 6 months.
14 CONCLUSION
Becoming a data-driven utility is an imperative of the digital age. Data-based
insights are critical to real-time grid operations and just as crucial to running
a utility enterprise in an era rife with disruptive technological and market forces. The interdependence and synergies between sensors, communication
networks, software-based systems, and hardware to monitor and control the
grid and run the enterprise is too complex for an ad hoc approach. Therefore, a holistic approach based on a foundation of open architecture and standards
will ensure interoperability between devices, systems, databases and, not inci-
dentally, people. The processes required in a holistic approach represent an opportunity to eliminate traditional organizational silos and unify utility per-
sonnel around the utility’s fundamental mission of delivering safe, reliable,
affordable power to its customers. The guiding mantra that governs this approach is that every person in a utility who can produce value from data
should have access to that data, with proper security safeguards in place.
While operational data currently demands the most attention, nonoperational
data—now plentiful with the addition of IEDs to the distribution system—
must be exploited as well. The full use of both data streams—and customer- generated social media-related data—offers many benefits to both operations
and enterprise. The systematic use of data can make operations safer and more
reliable, resilient, and efficient. On the enterprise side, full exploitation of all available data supports a shift from time-based to condition-based asset man-
agement and aids value creation by planning, power quality, maintenance,
engineering, and other enterprise units. Regulators have affirmed that cus- tomers own their energy use data and have the prerogative to share it with third
parties that offer value in return. Thus the future viability of the utility enter-
prise, amid disruptive market forces, appears likely to depend on the creation of customer service options and that eventuality will also rely on the availability
and exploitation of data.
To maximize the value of existing assets and guarantee the value of future
investments, a foundational ICT platform—a “strong” grid—must be in place
before adding intelligence for a “smart” grid. This foundation enables func- tional data paths with response requirements matched to the data they trans-
mit. Operational data is routed to the control room for real-time monitoring
and control, while a SCADA historian sends a subset of operational data across the corporate firewall for enterprise use. Nonoperational data is also sent across
the corporate firewall for storage in a virtual data mart, enabling processing and
26 CHAPTER 1: A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
access on-demand by enterprise business units. Easy-to-grasp presentation of
results represents a critical final step in this process. Dashboards and other means of presentation remain an area for further innovation.
Ultimately, operations and enterprise personnel should share insights and actionable intelligence gleaned through this holistic approach to data manage-
ment across the entire organization. The three case studies provided in
Chapter 1.1 are just a small sampling of real-world value creation through the use of SCADA-related data based on a positive business case.
14.1 Looking Ahead
This brief overview of the holistic approach to utility data management sets the
stage for the contents of this book.
The remaining chapters in Section One will go into more detail on the impor- tance of, and methods to achieve, the initiatives described here. That includes
the development of an open, standards-based information architecture for
data-driven utilities, frameworks for big data integration, warehousing and ana- lytics, overall management of the data being produced, stored and processed, as
well as the data security and privacy challenges facing utilities.
The foregoing overview merely places data analytics and presentation/
visualization in context. Section Two of this book will delve more deeply into
the algorithms and mathematics that characterize current data analytics prac- tices, including statistical learning, machine learning, deep learning, and other
approaches. Theoretical discussions of these topics will be matched with simple
examples that illustrate complex ideas.
A brief overview can only mention the transformational outcomes that a data-
driven utility is likely to achieve. Improved operational safety, reliability, and
resiliency are among the likely outcomes cited, and the specifics of how those goals are achieved are treated in Section Three. The discussion will cover appro-
priate, data-driven methods for meeting daily utility challenges such as diag- nostics, volt/var optimization, risk management, oscillation mitigation, and
market operations. Section Three will also bring readers up to date on new ana-
lytical applications that enable DER forecasting, load disaggregation, predictive maintenance, customer behavioral analysis, cyber-attack detection, and other
insights.
In sum, this landmark book provides the philosophy, the concepts, and the methods toempower a utility to adopta proactive, holistic approach to becoming
a data-driven utility. The ensuing journey will transform a utility’s operational
and organizational practices and structure and should provide the flexibility to develop and implement new business models as the market requires. The urgency
of this transformational approach cannot be overstated. Carpe diem!
27References
References [1] For more on “strong” before “smart” grid, see J.D. McDonald, et al., Refining a holistic view of
grid modernization, the final chapter in: Smart Grids: Infrastructure, Technology, and Solu-
tions, CRC Press, Boca Raton, in press, 2017. For more on open information architectures and related standards, see J.D. McDonald, Managing Big Data: Challenges and Winning Strat-
egies, T&D Magazine, 2014, pp. 29–30.
[2] J.D. McDonald, Integrating DA With AMI May Be Rude Awakening for Some Utilities, Renew Grid, Oxford, CT, 2013. passim.
[3] For the role of IEDs and non-operational data, see: J.D. McDonald, Extracting Value from Data, Electricity Today (May 2013) passim. For the role of IEDs and non-operational data,
see On IED integration, see J.D. McDonald, Substation automation: IED integration and
the availability of information, IEEE Power Energy Mag. 99 (2003) 23–24.
[4] J.D. McDonald, Extracting Value from Data, Electricity Today, 2013, 9.
[5] J.D. McDonald, Transformer Monitoring, Communications Networks and Data Marts:
Extracting Full Value From Monitoring and Automation Schemes to Aid Enterprise Challenges,” Keynote Paper, TechCon Asustralia, 2015.
[6] J.D. McDonald, Substation automation: IED integration and the availability of information, IEEE Power Energy Mag. 99 (2003) 23.
[7] J.D. McDonald, et al., Realizing the power of data marts, IEEE Power Energy Mag. 5 (2007)
64–65. passim.
[8] See both J.D. McDonald, Integrated System, Social Media, Improve Grid Reliability, Customer
Satisfaction, Electric Light & Power, Tulsa (Dec. 1, 2012) passim, and J.D. McDonald, Con-
sumers and Home Energy Management: As Standards Emerge, It’s No Longer ‘if,’ but ‘when’ and ‘how’, PowerGrid International, Tulsa, (April 15, 2014) passim.
[9] M.S. Thomas, J.D. McDonald, These case studies are summarizedPower System SCADA and Smart Grids, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2015, pp. 70–73.
[10] D. Carpenter, V. Foster, J.D. McDonald, Kentucky Utility Fires Up Its First SCADA System, T&D
World, Overland Park, KS, 2005.
[11] H. Hansen, J.D. McDonald, Ketchikan Public UTILITIES Finds Solutions to Outdated, Propri-
etary RTUs, vol. 2, Electricity Today, 2004.
[12] J.D. McDonald, North Carolina Municipal Power Agency Boosts Revenues by Replacing
SCADA, vol. 7, Electricity Today, 2003.
- A Holistic Approach to Becoming a Data-Driven Utility
- Introduction
- Aligning Internal and External Stakeholders
- Taking a Holistic Approach
- ``Strong´´ First, Then ``Smart´´
- Increasing Visibility With IEDs
- Network Response Requirements
- Integration Before Automation
- Functional Data Paths: Keep it Simple
- From Sensor to End User: The Process
- Consumers/Customers: Another Source of Data
- Extracting Value From Data, and Presenting It
- The Transformation
- Three Case Studies
- Frankfort, Kentucky, and Greenfield SCADA, SA
- Ketchikan, Alaska, Deals With Unsupported, Legacy RTUs
- North Carolina Agency Pursues New SCADA, Boosts Revenue
- Conclusion
- Looking Ahead
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-2---Emerging-Security-and-Data-Privacy-Chal_2018_Big-Data-Applicatio.pdf
CHAPTER 2
Emerging Security and Data Privacy Challenges for Utilities: Case Studies and Solutions
Carol L. Stimmel Manifest Mind, LLC, Canaan, NY, United States
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Cybersecurity applications are rapidly becoming an integral part of the utility operations, managing
and processing millions of events per second with microsecond latency without impacting the underlying grid, operations, or enterprise infrastructures. While there are major weaknesses in
the distribution system, which are vulnerable to exploitation for which these applications serve,
there are myriad new attack vectors being added every day. Yet, while utilities spend most of their
cybersecurity resources building a virtual wall around grid assets, they overlook the source of the most common attack vector on the grid—the utility employee. Utilities are much more than the
physical operation of the grid; utilities are also responsible for massive enterprise systems with
financial information, customer data, and a growing network of digital operations under human control. Thus, security strategies must become more nuanced and complex, and should include pri-
vacy and other internal information technology controls.
1 INTRODUCTION
Cybersecurity and data privacy are major challenges in protecting the utility’s
critical infrastructure amid the growing population of critical digital assets and consumers within the electric system. Despite the scope of known vulner-
abilities, threats, and emerging data analytic approaches that exist to respond-
ing to cyberattack against the utility, simulations show that not only are there major weaknesses in the distribution system, but also that a massive cyberattack
could leave some parts of even the most advanced systems with outages lasting
up to several weeks. In fact, it is grid modernization itself, especially the rapid deployment of distributed energy resources (DER) that have created such a
broad swathe of attack vectors.
There is a tendency within the industry to focus on traditional cybersecurity
measures, particularly through information technology at the expense of over-
all resilience. Yet, standard measures of cyberdefense are a poor fit for the elec- trical system. Consider the fear of an attack that results in a prolonged blackout;
from nearly every societal measure, including those of economy, health, and
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00002-4
29
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
30 CHAPTER 2: Emerging Security and Data Privacy Challenges for Utilities
public safety, could cause massive disruption. The power system must always
be available, and security countermeasures that impede power availability are just not appropriate. In most other industries, particularly financial services,
the confidentiality and integrity of data in the system have a higher precedence
over availability. With the grid, the availability of electricity is the preeminent security objective, and its quality and privacy of data transferred are secondary
concerns.
There is little conclusive evidence that the traditional cybersecurity tactics cur-
rently engaged by many utilities are strategically coherent toward meeting the
increased threat levels against the critical electricity infrastructure. What are needed are strategies that are cognizant of the complexities of the digital grid
that is comprised in large part by digital technology. As David Kennedy, the
CEO of TrustedSec and former Marine Intelligence Officer puts it plainly, “Our grid is definitely vulnerable… The energy industry is pretty far behind
most other industries when it comes to security best practices and maintaining
systems” [1]. However, what is most needed is not the stacking of more capa- bilities, but a fundamental rethinking about the problem of cybersecurity far
more comprehensively than a traditional security operation, a common
approach which is not only shortsighted but also wholly insufficient.
2 CASE STUDIES: THE STATE AND SCOPE OF THE THREAT
While the world faces an array of cyberthreats, the complete dependence that
western society has on electricity makes the grid a very ripe target for attack. And with the turn of the 21st century—as billions of connected devices come on
line—the face of cyberthreats as a weapon of cyberwar by advanced nation-
states brings to bear considerable abilities to probe defenses and coordinate attacks across public and private targets through myriad vectors. There is an
accelerating understanding of not just the threats to the utility, but the extensive
complex of vulnerabilities that can impact digital networks, machines, and sys- tems, and the information within the system—all which bear consequence to
the mission of reliable and secure energy. As the electric grid grows more inter-
connected with digital and DER, this risk grows exponentially because of the inclusion of physical assets on the grid including rooftop and ground mount
solar arrays that may not be controllable by the utility, sensors, and actuators
(collectively referred to as the Internet of Things or IoT), smart meters that can link the utility to devices inside home, and the data that is integral to opera-
tions, market functions, and customer service.
Given the expanding scope of vulnerability and the demand for a resilient and
secure grid, there is surprising little clarity in the industry for understanding
312 Case Studies: The State And Scope Of The Threat
cybersecurity and cyberterrorism. Factors that contribute to this murkiness
include a lack of regulatory clarity, governance, uniqueness of utilities across markets and geographic regions, low overall investment, and growing public
confusion and doubt about not just the gravity of the issue of cybersecurity,
but it is very existence. Yet despite an increase in capability for automated attacks, improved policy and governance, education, and application whitelist-
ing, such attacks have declined precipitously in favor of the softest and easiest
target—the human being.
The 2016 Human Factor cybersecurity assessment found, “Attackers shifted
away from automated exploits and instead engaged people to do the dirty work—infecting systems, stealing credentials, and transferring funds. Across
all vectors and in attacks of all sizes, threat actors used social engineering to trick
people into doing things that once depended on malicious code” [2]. Perhaps the infamous hacker Kevin Mitnick was correct when he said, “The biggest
threat to the security of a company is not a computer virus, an unpatched hole
in a key program or a badly installed firewall. In fact, the biggest threat could be you. What I found personally to be true was that it’s easier to manipulate people
rather than technology. Most of the time organizations overlook that human
element.” [3]. To a large extent, cybersecurity in the electric grid is a matter of transparent relationships and engagement between the utility and its
employees, partners, and customers, including how information and data
are transferred, secured, used, and analyzed.
There are several modern-day cases that stand out as remarkable demonstra-
tions of this finding and why we might expect this trend to persist: Burlington Electric, Aramco, and Ukrainian Kyivoblenergo.
2.1 Coordinated Cyberattack Causes Outage in the Ukraine
In December of 2015, two separate power distribution companies in the Ukraine, Prykarpattyaoblenergo electric utility and Kyivoblenergo, announced
that they had been hacked. The hack had caused a blackout from lost power to distribution regions that served more than 80,000 people. Further, the hackers
also sabotaged several operator computers which made it difficult to restore
electricity service. Because of the damage to the operational system, utility com- pany workers had to travel to substations to manually reset the breakers which
the hack had remotely opened. It was a fairly short-lived event, but it was
remarkable since it is the first known electricity blackout that has ever been caused by a known cyberattack [4].
The attack had several levels of coordination apart from remotely opening the
circuit breakers. First, the hackers blinded the operational staff by freezing data on the screens, where unbeknownst to the operators, situational intelligence
32 CHAPTER 2: Emerging Security and Data Privacy Challenges for Utilities
reported that the power system was functioning properly. Secondly, the hackers
launched a denial-of-service attack against the call center to prevent customers from reporting a service outage. The center was left answering bogus calls which
prevented real customers from getting through to the operators. Apparently not
satisfied, once the operators began trying to repair the outage, the enterprise functions of the company were shut down when a program called KillDisk
caused company computers to crash, wiping out the master boot records
and preventing a reboot.
Nothing is entirely clear about the execution of the breach except that it began
with a spearfishing campaign in March of 2015, which likely was the point of entry for malware known as BackEnergy2. This malware can open a backdoor
to the system enabling further injection of malware or other applications and
data. Robert M. Lee, a former Cyber Warfare Operations Officer for the US Air Force, underscored how even a simple attack can be devastating when it is coor-
dinated with others, “The capabilities used weren’t particularly sophisticated
but the logistics, planning, use of three methods of attack, coordinated strike against key sites, etc. was extremely well sophisticated” [5].
2.2 Severe Financial Impacts at Saudi Aramco
In mid-2012, a computer IT specialist working at Saudi Aramco opened a
phishing email and clicked on the link. Chris Kubecka, a former security
advisor to Saudi Aramco described the attack, “It started sometime in mid- 2012… One of the computer technicians on Saudi Aramco’s information
technology team opened a scam email and clicked on a bad link. The hackers
were in” [6]. Half a year later, “weird things” started happening—screens flick- ered, files began to be wiped from the drives, and some systems fully shut
down. Unable to control the onslaught, the IT team had to physically rip cables
out of the backs of servers at their international data centers and take every office around the world physically offline.
Still, while the company managed to keep up production, the supply lines fal- tered, contracts could not be fulfilled, financial transactions halted, office lines,
email, and ability to execute new deals that required signatures stopped cold
until more utilitarian processes (such as fax machines) were brought online.
Three weeks later, Saudi Aramco was forced to begin giving oil away for free to
keep production flowing. At the final tally, in coping with one employee click-
ing an infected link, the company had to purchase 50,000 new hard drives at a premium price (which ultimately constrained the world supply of hard drives)
and it took five months before the company was fully back online. The email
spearfishing attack had threatened 10% of the world’s oil and would surely have bankrupt other less moneyed entities.
332 Case Studies: The State And Scope Of The Threat
2.3 The Misunderstood Near Miss: Burlington Electric and Grizzly Steppe
There is a reason humans are the best attack vectors, as they tend to ignore safety
warnings and procedural controls. The most compelling thing about the case of Burlington Electrics is not that a mail lure was used (and which was found and
disabled due to revelations from recently uncovered political campaign hacks),
but the public response to the attack which discounted it as fake. This is partic- ularly chilling when malware campaign trends indicate that optimized cam-
paigns from advanced threat actors are sure to increase.
To fully understand this result, this study requires a brief review of the 2016 US presidential campaign. The hacking at Burlington Electric was discovered due
to a warning that emerged in the immediate days after the contentious 2016 US presidential election in which state-sponsored hacking by the Russians was
determined to have occurred. Of the Russian meddling, the Office of the US
Director of National Intelligence concluded, “Russia’s intelligence services con- ducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 US presiden-
tial election, including targets associated with both major US political parties”
to assist in carrying out an influence campaign to displace candidates who were perceived as hostile to the Kremlin [7]. The importance of this connection is not
immediately obvious, but the Burlington Electric hacking concerns occurred at
a time of heightened sensitivity to Russian state actors.
Given the sharp divide among the US electorate during the election, citizen
response to the revelations cut across party lines, with those who voted for the
president elect remaining sanguine about the legitimacy of the election [8]. Thus, the response to this report was met with hostility by many in the US pub-
lic, either calling it hysteria or accepting the reported details of the event uncrit-
ically. The impact was surprising, but Russia was indeed high in the popular imagination. Studies done in the weeks after the election also showed a vivid
shift in sentiment from 2014 to 2016 toward the Russian president, Vladimir
Putin, which swung dramatically from a net negative of �66 points to a positive 10 [9]. Thus, when the account of Russians breaking into Burlington Electric
was released, an event that would normally have garnered slight interest among
the broad public became political fodder.
On December 30th 2016, the Washington Post reported that a Russian hacking
group—the very same that was suspected of trying to influence the US presidential election—had struck the electric with a malware injection, that put the grid at
serious risk. At first, a story in the Washington Post claimed that the Russians
had penetrated the grid, in fact Grizzly Steppe, the same malware that was reportedly used to influence the 2016 US presidential elections. The malware
was discovered after US intelligence agencies released software for a Russian
hacker group named Grizzly Steppe to allow utilities and other to search for
34 CHAPTER 2: Emerging Security and Data Privacy Challenges for Utilities
the digital signatures of the malware to isolate and remove it from their systems.
The headline that many in the utilities industry had dreaded for years read, “Russian hackers penetrated US electricity grid through a utility in Vermont,”
a story (and headline). However, as the investigation progressed, it was found
that the malware had been contained to a single employee computer. While the story was reworked the story for greater accuracy, including statements that the
grid was never compromised, the headline ultimately came to read, “Russian
operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to US electrical grid security, officials say” [10].
Because of the politicization of Russian hacking, the Washington Post took a serious drubbing for an inaccurate story, which would normally have been for-
given as a technical misunderstanding of grid vulnerabilities and overly enthu-
siastic reporting in covering a potentially catastrophic event. And while there were issues related to the sourcing of the story, as Brian Harrell, the former
director of critical infrastructure protection programs at NERC, raised concerns
over the handling of attacking of the grid in the future, “Unfortunately, [the leak] may be seen as a reason to hesitate or pause when wanting to communi-
cate with those on the outside… Every utility is monitoring and taking notes as
to how this has played out in the media. The result will be hesitancy when reporting in the future” [11].
Short of an employee plugging their computer into the wrong network, Burlington Electric was not brought down. While Forbes dismissed the story
as a ridiculous fairytale of “Russian hackers burrowed deep within the US elec-
trical grid, ready to plunge the nation into darkness at the flip of a switch,” the Department of Homeland Security had the final world, stating that a Russian
hacking cell—the very one that reportedly worked to influence the 2016 pres-
idential election had indeed breached the computer system and dumped mali- cious software on a computer [12,13]. Clearly, that is only a factor of
immanence, as the corrected story says, “It is unclear if the penetration was
an attempt to disrupt the utility or simply a test” [13]. Surely, there is little comfort in that conclusion if one understands the scope of danger that human
failure brings to cyberdefense.
2.4 Impact on Practices in the Utility Industry
The impact of this shift in attitude should be made clear to those who work to
keep systems safe: every year, millions of dollars are spent in information tech- nologies to prevent malicious attack, but it is of diminishing value if employees
cannot be convinced that there is a reason to follow security practices. These case
studies demonstrate that utilities, like all companies, are going to continue to facerelentless targetingbysocial-engineeredemailswithmaliciousURLstoinfil-
trate automated exploits into a user’s system with a malware payload that can
353 The Digitized Network Increases Vulnerability
steal their information, open a backdoor, or replicate itself and move through
the system. The lures will only improve and overwhelmingly, URL-based cam- paigns, spearfishing for credentials, infected attachments, and invitations to
use shared files and images will continue to be offered at an alarming rate.
3 THE DIGITIZED NETWORK INCREASES VULNERABILITY
Utilities will never be immune to cyber, physical, or blended attacks; however
the problems related to sabotage is unique. What began sometime around 2009 with “Stuxnet,” the digital worm assumed by many to be a joint Israeli-
US project, designed to sabotage Iran’s uranium enrichment program by dam-
aging centrifuges, was unleashed, ultimately demonstrating the destructive power of the world’s first widely known cyberweapon. Certainly, while the noto-
riety and widespread damage that could occur from a successful attack on the
grid are of interest to political hackers, lone wolves, and state-sponsored hacker gangs alike, the specter of state-sponsored disruption of the electrical system is a
capability taken directly from the cold war. Government Security News of Russian efforts to install malware into the US grid, write “…the BlackEnergy hack-
ing campaign has been ongoing since 2011, but no attempt has been made to
activate the malware to damage, modify, or otherwise disrupt affected systems.” ICS-CERT officials believe that Russian intelligence agencies helped place the
malwareinkeyUSsystemsasa threatoradeterrenttoa UScyberattack onRussian
systems—mutual assured destruction from a cold war-era playbook [14].
This stance is sincere: Because electric energy is generated and consumed almost
instantaneously, system operators must continuously balance the generation
and consumption of power. The smart grid, DER, including grid-scale batteries, which allow this to happen with reliability requires a digital two-way commu-
nicating infrastructure which increases the number of vulnerable points in the
system. As our two case studies and one near-miss show, disruption of the infra- structure at a single or small number of points in the grid can have substantial
negative impacts that can quickly result in a cascading effect across transmission
and distribution networks.
As described in Fig. 1, the smart grid layers technology to create the electricity
infrastructure comprised of a network of sensors, meters, controls, data
MonitorCollect Analyze Explore Respond
FIG. 1
Situational intelligence from collection to response. Reproduced with permission from C.L. Stimmel, Big
Data Analytics Strategies for the Smart Grid, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2014.
Table 1 Description o
Utility System E
Communications D li
Advanced components
S
Automated control systems
M a
Sensing and measurement
S
Decision support O
Customer-facing systems
W c
Reproduced with permission
36 CHAPTER 2: Emerging Security and Data Privacy Challenges for Utilities
communications infrastructure, and the operational applications and enter-
prise intelligence systems which make a variety of exploits possible. As the inte- gration of smart devices enabled by computers, software, networks, and the
enterprise continues, the danger of attack increases—in both intentional and
unintentional ways—and continues to scale with the increased digitization of the system (Table 1).
3.1 Attack Scenarios
The consequences of a cyberattack on the grid infrastructure include potentially
massive and large-scale outages that could ravage the power grid with mechan-
ical overstress and breakdown as with Stuxnet, or even a series of coordinated simple attacks which can create chaos, bankrupt a massive company as in the
f Common Exploits That Could Occur Within a Utility System
xample Functions Possible Exploits
ata transport, such as over broadband over power ne (BPL), cellular, wireless, or satellite networks
Passive wiretapping Man-in-the-middle attacks Data modification Internet Protocol (IP) spoofing
mart switches, storage devices, smart appliances, transformers Routing attacks Denial-of-service attacks Node subversion Message corruption Botnets
onitoring and control systems such as voltage regulators nd substation and distribution equipment
Zero-day exploits Modifications on controllers Spearfishing
mart meters and phasor measurement units (PMUs) Wardriving Node capture Routing attacks Node subversion
perational applications to manage the electricity system Structured Query Language (SQL) injection Buffer overflow Cross-site scripting Cross-site request forgery
eb-based systems that provide account access to ustomers
SQL injection Cross-site scripting Denial-of-service attack Impersonation attacks
from C.L. Stimmel, Big Data Analytics Strategies for the Smart Grid, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2014.
374 The Role Of Data Analytics
near-disaster of Aramco, or dangerously fail to raise the concern or perception
of threat level in a complacent, distracted, and skeptical society.
The following are the high-level grid-specific scenarios for cyberattack that
were identified in the author’s 2014 book, Big Data Analytics Strategies for the Smart Grid:
1. Reprogramming of critical electricity infrastructure components, resulting in major power delivery disruption
2. Theft of sensitive digital information used to mount later, more
coordinated attacks 3. Blended threats using a combination of hacking with a physical attack
such as a fire or bombing (p. 128).
As mentioned earlier in the chapter, most societal and institutional fears tend to
the Pearl Harbor level of attack, although hacktivism, privacy violations, and other forms of sabotage are still concerns under traditional models. Yet still,
many in the popular media find it difficult to shake stereotypical characteriza-
tions of hackers as junk-food eating, Red Bull-drinking man, children with dig- ital bolt cutters; potential attackers may include script kiddies, but also revenge
seekers, organized criminals, and state-sponsored cyberwarriors. As we have
discussed, the common perception of hacking is tired, dated, and dangerous. But still, no matter the threat agent, as much as 80% of information technology
breaches are caused or assisted by people “inside” the enterprise, and as was
demonstrated in the discussion, spearfishing. Either willingly or unwillingly and with or without mal intent, security breaches are created by people within
the organization [15].
This does not mean that the utility should cease efforts to protect against exter- nal cyberattacks. It does mean, however, that assessing and managing risk with
tools must include accounting for every attack vectors, including those from all
nodes within the outside plant, the corporate network, and operations.
4 THE ROLE OF DATA ANALYTICS
Fast-expanding concerns for cybersecurity threats in the digital network have brought attention from regulators and governments that are charged with pro-
ducing laws and standards for the utility. Industry standards development for
cybersecurity have been most prolific in North America, particularly in the United States and Canada; though globally, the lack of fast progress on security
and privacy issues has slowed smart grid deployments in some regions. Stan-
dard initiatives have progressed quickly, but comprehensive development of coherent cybersecurity plans among utilities has been disparate; utilities need
to do more to understand, engage, and comply with the NERC CIP (North
38 CHAPTER 2: Emerging Security and Data Privacy Challenges for Utilities
American Electric Reliability Corporation critical infrastructure protection
standards).
NERC is the electricity sector’s coordinator for CIP, and the firm provides stan-
dards development, compliance enforcement, and extensive technical material and subject-matter expertise. The NERC CIP standards are the only fully fledged
cybersecurity standards in place to address the security and reliability of the
electricity grid. The standards include mandates for incident reporting, autho- rization protocols, minimum security management controls, and disaster
recovery. NERC CIP does much to reduce risk and improve the security posture
of North American bulk electricity systems. However, it is impossible to address every security risk, and this is precisely why the opportunity for data-driven
cybersecurity analytics holds such profound value for more advanced security
controls that utilize the massive spatiotemporal data produced by smart meters, SCADA, and synchrophasors.
As our case studies clearly show, the idea that we can build a virtual wall around our grid assets is crude, rudimentary, and ultimately creates a brittle and vulner-
able network. Further, utilities are much more than the physical operation of
the grid; utilities are also responsible for massive enterprise systems with finan- cial information, customer data, and a growing network of digital operations.
Thus, security strategies are quickly becoming more nuanced. A program of
security data analytics may be the best option for proactively and cost- effectively containing threats from the field, the enterprise, and the physical
plant as the volume of actuating sensors explodes. Analytics may be the key
to usher analytics from chronic vulnerability to a proactive posture.
Analytics for cybersecurity allows for the use of pattern-detection algorithms
with both structured and unstructured data sources, including forensic capabil-
ities, to identify both internal and external threats. This allows the utility to ask new questions that have not been possible before, regarding their defensive
posture. As Fig. 1 describes, an integrated analytics approach provides closed-
loop, continuous learning that furnishes situational intelligence previously unavailable to security programs within the utility.
The following are useful analytical models that can contribute to cybersecurity and resiliency of the digital grid:
1. Descriptive: Situational intelligence
2. Diagnostic: Quantification of threat levels and their characteristics 3. Predictive: Identifying and preventing threat levels and characteristics
4. Prescriptive: Designing action response to future incidents
Traditional security models are largely passive defense systems and primarily focus on detection. Unfortunately, they often fall under the hand of a persistent
hacker with a grab bag of cheap exploits. They need only find a single point of
394 The Role Of Data Analytics
entry, and it is virtually free to try all day. Big data analytics on the other hand
provides more predictive and prescriptive tools that provide the ability to stop attackers during an attack. For example, some big data models can leverage
massive volumes of data, and therefore quite effective at recognizing attack pat-
terns and other anomalous patterns (anomalies which hackers are becoming effective at covering up, as in the frozen screen in the Ukraine case study).
4.1 The Role of Privacy
While a well-conceived cybersecurity program in the utility provides compre- hensive situational awareness across the grid, and the enterprise to ultimately
respond to and contain emerging threats, it is also very important to recognize
the role of data privacy. Securing data, in fact, is the most fundamental step in a full-fledged utility security profile. Further, the ability to properly contextualize
collected information to facilitate a cybersecurity program can include detailed
models at a granular and personal level. Political, culture, organizational man- agement, and strong data governance are crucial to protecting consumer data,
especially generating consumers who are part of the operational milieu.
Ann Cavoukian, the former information and privacy commissioner of Ontario,
Canada, and champion of the Privacy by Design (PbD) framework, identified
seven foundational principles that are more salient than ever:
• Privacy must be proactive not reactive by design, as in preventive not
corrective • Privacy is always the default and expected setting
• Privacy should be embedded into design plans, not bolted on as an
afterthought • Privacy rights are positive-sum, not zero-sum, meaning rights are not
earned at an expense to the user
• End-to-end security—full lifecycle protection exists from collection to sharing, storing, and ultimately destruction
• Visibility and transparency—Personal and private data uses must be
evident to users • Always provide respect for user privacy—it must be user-centric and
controllable by the user [16]
PbD should be applied as a standard practice in many areas of design and
should considered in the scope of all utility operations, including surveillance, biometrics, the smart grid, near field communications (NFC), sensing, remote
services, big-data analytics, and location services. It is important to note that
PbD has been widely accepted by international bodies, and is one the most spe- cific and actionable approaches to treating the exploding sphere of privacy chal-
lenges. Dr. Cavoukian’s work is precise in its position that privacy is always
40 CHAPTER 2: Emerging Security and Data Privacy Challenges for Utilities
about control—who has it and who does not. Thus, the essence of true privacy
is the ability to specify and limit the uses of one’s personal information. There is nothing about these principles that would or should undermine a utility oper-
ator to maintain their grid, provide services, or run their enterprise, even in
competitive markets.
5 CONCLUSION
While the utility implements classic cybersecurity tactics to protect grid
operations, big data analytics platforms that combine security intelligence with
powerful processing capabilities allow the utility to maintain a proactive pos- ture. Big data analytics platforms combine security intelligence with powerful
processing capabilities. The goal of these programs is to provide advanced
pattern detection and machine learning that can analyze massive streams of network traffic, millions of unique device data nodes, transport and communi-
cation characteristics, and user behavior to understand the machine and human
linkages within the entirety of the utility systems. These techniques are especially useful in identifying anomalous activity on a network that is high-volume,
high-velocity data traffic as found within the grid’s command-and-control
systems.
Cybersecurity applications will become an integral part of the utility opera-
tions, managing and processing millions of events per second with microsec- ond latency without impacting the underlying grid, operations, or enterprise
infrastructures. These applications will have multiple outputs, including tradi-
tional reports, situational intelligence dashboards, predictive models, content analytics, and other virtual reality applications.
DER will cause a variety of communication protocols and standards with vary- ing levels of cybersecurity fitness to be introduced into the grid at an acceler-
ating rate, especially in the secondary distribution grid. Also, with DER, there
are many interactions where there may be no central controlling body either for either functional or nonfunctional purposes. Because of the myriad stake-
holders, the challenges are complex. A NIST report written in 2014 on the
topic stated presciently, “It is not just the utilities who must take responsibility for achieving this resilience goal. Many stakeholders are involved in the
design, implementation, and operation of DER systems, including manufac-
turers, integrator/installers, users, information and communication technol- ogy (ICT) providers, security managers, testing and maintenance personnel,
and ultimately utility regulators. However, given this new cyber-physical
environment, often these stakeholders do not fully understand or appreciate the types of cybersecurity and engineering strategies that could or should be
used” [17].
41References
This may understate the scope of the cybersecurity problem; while technology
in the DER domain is evolving at an accelerated rate with systems are being interconnected every day, standards, policies, and governance are still being
hotly debated. And while the grid advances technologically, and our societal
dependency on it grows, it lags far behind in coping with the complexity of the human and physical linkages of the system. Ongoing discussion of cyber-
security must focus not only on the rapidly expanding grid under distributed
ownership but also on political, cultural, and behavioral implications, studies, and research.
References [1] J. Pagliery, Hackers Attacked the U.S. Energy Grid 79 Times This Year, Retrieved on 15 January
2017 from, http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/18/technology/security/energy-grid-hack/, 2014.
[2] The Human Factor, 2016. Retrieved 08 May 2017 from https://www.proofpoint.com/us/
human-factor-2016.
[3] SANS Institute InfoSec Reading Room, The Threat of Social Engineering and Your Defense
Against It, Retrieved on 15 January 2016 from, https://www.sans.org/reading-room/
whitepapers/engineering/threat-social-engineering-defense-1232, 2003.
[4] E-ISAC, Attack on the Ukrainian Power Grid: Defense Use Case, Retrieved on 14 January
2017 from, http://www.nerc.com/pa/CI/ESISAC/Documents/E-ISAC_SANS_Ukraine_DUC_
18Mar2016.pdf, 2016.
[5] K. Zetter, Everything We Know About Ukraine’s Power Plant Hack, Wired Magazine, 2016.
https://www.wired.com/2016/01/everything-we-know-about-ukraines-power-plant-hack/.
[6] J. Pagliery, The Inside Story of the Biggest Hack in History, Retrieved 15 January 2017 from,
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/05/technology/aramco-hack/, 2015.
[7] Department of National Intelligence, Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections, Retrieved on 15 January 2017 from, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_
2017_01.pdf, 2016.
[8] E. Bradner, Poll: 55% of Americans Bothered by Russian Election Hacking, Retrieved on 15 Jan- uary 2016 from, http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/18/politics/poll-russian-hacking/, 2016.
[9] M. Nussbaum, More Republicans View Putin Favorably, Retrieved 14 January 2017 from, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/gop-russia-putin-support-232714, 2016.
[10] J.Eilperin,A.Entous, RussianOperation Hacked a VermontUtility,ShowingRisktoUSElectrical
Grid Security, Officials say, Retrieved on 15 January 2017 from, http://wpo.st/EqlR2, 2016.
[11] R. Walton, What Electric Utilities Can Learn from the Vermont Hacking Scare, Retrieved 15 Jan-
uary 2017 from, http://www.utilitydive.com/news/what-electric-utilities-can-learn-from-the-
vermont-hacking-scare/433426/, 2016.
[12] K. Leetaru, ‘Fake News’ and How the Washington Post Rewrote Its Story on Russian Hacking of
the Power Grid, Retrieved on 15 January 2017 from, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/ 2017/01/01/fake-news-and-how-the-washington-post-rewrote-its-story-on-russian-hacking-of-
the-power-grid/#270bf2b4291e, 2017.
[13] McCullum, Russian Hackers Strike Burlington Electric with Malware, Retrieved on 15 January 2017 from, http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/vermont/2016/12/30/
russia-hacked-us-grid-through-burlington-electric/96024326/, April 2016.
42 CHAPTER 2: Emerging Security and Data Privacy Challenges for Utilities
[14] Government Security News, Black Energy Threatens U.S. Infrastructure, Retrieved on 14 Janu-
ary 2017 from, http://gsnmagazine.com/node/42887, 2014.
[15] M.B.R. Greene, in: CIO, G-6 Headquarters, New York Guard, A Statement Presented at the
GovSec 2013 Conference in Washington, DC, USA During the Session “Critical Infrastructure
Protection: The Enemy Within, 2013.
[16] A. Cavoukian, Operationalizing Privacy by Design: A Guide to Implementing Strong Privacy
Practices, Retrieved 15 January 2017 from, http://gpsbydesign.org/resources-item/ operationalizing-privacy-by-design-a-guide-to-implementing-strong-privacy-practices/, 2012.
[17] NIST, CIP for Grids with Interconnected DER Systems: Executive Summary, Retrieved on 14 Jan-
uary 2017 from, https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2016/09/16/xanthus_ rfi_response.pdf, 2016.
- Emerging Security and Data Privacy Challenges for Utilities: Case Studies and Solutions
- Introduction
- Case Studies: The State and Scope of the Threat
- Coordinated Cyberattack Causes Outage in the Ukraine
- Severe Financial Impacts at Saudi Aramco
- The Misunderstood Near Miss: Burlington Electric and Grizzly Steppe
- Impact on Practices in the Utility Industry
- The Digitized Network Increases Vulnerability
- Attack Scenarios
- The Role of Data Analytics
- The Role of Privacy
- Conclusion
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-3---The-Role-of-Big-Data-and-Analytics_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-.pdf
CHAPTER 3
The Role of Big Data and Analytics in Utility Innovation
Jeffrey S. Katz IBM, Hartford, CT, United States
43
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
The computational technology known as big data and its subsequent processing, analytics, are driv-
ing innovation in electric power system integration of renewable energy, outage prediction, proces- sing of increasing volumes of smart grid data, and velocity of such data. In the age of cybersecurity,
the veracity of these data is also a factor. The almost concurrent rise of cognitive computing gives
new importance to unstructured data such as images and text, and the intelligent connection of real-
time numerical data with written and visual data gives rise to even more innovation. The benefits of high-precision weather modeling on power demand, grid damage, and solar- and wind-based gen-
eration are also considered.
1 INTRODUCTION OF BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS AS AN ACCELERATOR OF INNOVATION
Utilities have been involved with big data and analytics since supervisory con-
trol and data acquisition (SCADA) systems became popular. The myriad of devices spread across a vast geographic area provides a huge amount of mon-
itoring data, potentially accumulated over decades. The smart grid [1] era brought even more data, not only from the addition of sensors but also from
the increasing amount of embedded computing in traditional power equip-
ment. This was not limited to more operational data, since as device intelli- gence increased, monitoring of the status of the local real-time computing
systems became more important in order to have a coordinating distributed
computing environment. While this primarily applies to transmission and dis- tribution, there is expansion of the scope in both directions. The distribution
side sensing now creeps in to monitoring of customer-owned equipment, such
as solar panel and inverter health. Aspects of demand response systems may be allowed to look at data from home energy control systems or individual appli-
ances, in order to effect a smoother demand response action. On the other side,
growing past the transmission side, modern power plant distributed control systems have extended gateways to other plant computers, plus today’s effective
in-plant wireless sensors reduce the installation cost of sensors, which has
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00003-6
Copyright © 2018 IBM. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
44 CHAPTER 3: The Role of Big Data and Analytics in Utility Innovation
always exceeded the price of the sensor itself. The generating plants themselves
now are more distributed, with utility-scale wind turbine farms and solar instal- lations. Unlike traditional large fossil or nuclear power stations, these renew-
able energy farms may have no local staff. That isolation, combined with the
tighter monitoring requirements due to their power output variability, provide a new data deluge. Therefore, the premise of innovation in power systems being
driven by big data and analytics is even more promising.
While there is plenty to say about the amount of big data, there are equally
significant aspects in analytics that contribute to innovation. The power of
personal computing, often driven by gaming needs, is impressive even to those who see the end of Moore’s law. The computing power available to
the individual power engineer though is far from limited, given the
community-computing phenomenon called cloud computing. The days of liv- ing with limitations of a single computer running generic mathematical tools
are in the past. Easily accessible cloud computing, sometimes needing only a
credit card, empowers the solution of complex problems, at flexible scale, such as those transmission analyses solved by huge sparse matrix techniques. Cloud
computing has become significant enough to power system applications that
the International Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)’s Power and Energy Society (PES) General Meetings in 2014 and 2015 had cloud panels
[2]. Moreover, cloud-based analytics platforms aimed at electric utilities
[3,4], remove much of the “IT” development prior to obtaining business results. The irritations of system integration of software modules are abstracted
in these integrated platforms. Easier access to tools for statistical analysis, busi-
ness intelligence, and signal processing provide an easier method to extract knowledge from today’s big data. Furthermore, some platforms, by means of
uniform organization and modeling of data, along with a standard-based elec-
tric component data model, eliminate the bane of power engineers, data cura- tion. Going further, the need for decades of experience to understand the data is
made a bit easier through advances in visualization. In fact, some agile devel-
opment teams begin with visualization and automated modeling of the data, in discovery mode, to see what patterns might be learned. While this does not dis-
place the need for standard IEEE analytics, it does assist in innovating new algo-
rithms to detect unusual operational or maintenance patterns.
The earlier reference to generic mathematical tools does not mean their useful-
ness is supplanted. On the contrary, many new ideas come from individuals trying out an idea with these types of tools. However, newer, more complex
software can assist in uncovering interesting correlations, and most platforms
provide interfaces such as through Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) to keep these personal tools relevant and easily connected to these types of utility
analytics platforms. Moreover, there are a new generation of data science
exploration tools, and easier to implement programmatic interfaces for more complex situations. An essential point though is that these tools are focused
452 Approaches To Data Driven Innovation
on numerical data, which are a subclass of structured data. All of the data
referred to so far, in fact, are structured. With the era of cognitive computing blooming, the unstructured data, from maintenance reports in enterprise asset
management applications [5,6], to high-resolution still images from helicop-
ters or drones, to acoustic and thermal data, all expand the field of data resources available for analytics processing in utilities. The need for many peo-
ple to be the arbiter of relevance for unstructured data matched to structured
data is now reduced. Software that can detect features in unstructured data and correlate them with measured data gives the opportunity for many new
insights. Eventually, insights lead to new understanding for engineers and then
sometimes to improved operational guidance or even smarter closed loop con- trol. This is the true promise of big data and analytics-driven innovation.
2 APPROACHES TO DATA DRIVEN INNOVATION
The electric grid is one of the most tightly coupled, high-speed critical infrastruc-
ture networks. Today’s innovations with big data are often made possible from fastercommunicationofthedata,PMUsbeinganexcellentexample.Largercom-
puter memory and processing power to analyze the data and visualization tech-
niques to support discoveries within the data have opened the path wider. Several major utilities are adding more software developers and data scientists
to their R&D groups, as well as power system experts. The power of data in inno-
vation is seen in some earlier approaches to smart grid. These “smart grid zero” projects applied big data and analytics without adding any new sensors, demon-
strating the power of knowing more about what the utility already knew. Some
early adopters of big data and analytics in utilities made their first priority to expand the storageassociatedwith SCADA systems.Thiscamefrom the foresight
that data discarded while in the process of developing an analytics strategy, including predictive maintenance programs, would be valuable as the design
phase began, even if there was no known need for all of the data at the time. Data
storage is inexpensive compared to the loss of information from which to learn.
Analytics has moved from replicating alarm limits already available to online
FFTs, cognitive computing, and numerical and algorithmic methodologies.
Utilities are being encouraged to adopt some agile software methods, such as a period of data exploration, to see the art of the possible, rather than limiting
analytics to already conceived ideas of what needed to be examined in the data.
Fig. 1 is a representative architecture for big data and analytics in an electric power distribution utility.
In the current world of computer science, more data accumulated by the equip- ment owner also become more concentrated data that may attract the cyberse-
curity offender activity. This requires consideration of cybersecurity during the
© 2015 IBM Corporation
Technology & data platform
Integration with exploration zone
Analytics apps
Consuming apps
SCADA AMI
Data ingestion
Predictive analytic services Cognitive and optimization
services
SOP Alerts/alarms
Analytics & visualization Data exploration tools
Open platform
Landing, discovery, archive
In memory
Cluster
Productivity services
REST API
Operational data
Analytics data store
BI services
SDK
Integration / ingestion
Utility’s apps Partners
SQL, streaming
Asset health & risk
Connectivity model
Weather analytics
OMS
Data store
Historical data store
ODS Cloud / PaaS
FIG. 1
Example energy and utilities analytics platform to power innovation.
46 CHAPTER 3: The Role of Big Data and Analytics in Utility Innovation
thrust for innovation and thinking about security measures in newer protocols,
in the choice of communication medium, and in appropriate use of ubiquitous
cloud computing. Physical security to protect from interception of data or from the planting of false data generators in remote locations and image processing
on surveillance cameras are also generating big data for operational support. In
fact, modern cybersecurity is looking at the whole asset, and the utility’s security posture becomes another measurement feeding a different analytic. Security
can now be thought of as another dimension of real-time asset monitoring, just
as voltage and current are. The first detection of a cyberattack may well be inferred from insights gleaned from the traditional SCADA data, and not in
an alert from a firewall. Cybersecurity in electric power systems has become
a rising concern, as cited in many federal government documents and brought to the forefront by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s
(NIST) cybersecurity framework for critical infrastructure. The need for innova-
tion in security becomes a new upper echelon analytics need, along with
473 Integration Of Renewable Energy
integration of renewable energy. The reader has likely seen news of substations
that may have to process local acoustic or vibration data to see if they are being shot at.
3 INTEGRATION OF RENEWABLE ENERGY
On the top of many big data and analytics development lists is the need for
innovation in the era of renewable energy. This is especially true when exam- ining fast variability in wind turbines and solar panel outputs. These fluctuating
generators impose changes on the grid that needs data-driven optimization to
maintain the system safe, in balance, and meet environmental friendly inten- tions. This newer equipment, which may not all be utility owned, controlled, or
even monitored, contains, due its more recent design, more embedded com-
puting and sensors than traditional generation. Much of the generation source data have to be processed to assist in learning new maintenance patterns, feed
weather simulations of solar flux and cloud coverage, manage power quality
from inverters, and ensure safe operation. Some believe that human-in-the- loop control, as in traditional control rooms, cannot achieve the utilization
goals expected of large-scale renewable energy deployment. The temporal var-
iations in the optimization goals of balancing demand, conventional genera- tion, renewable power production, and storage systems may be possible
only with the considered application of big data and analytics.
The need for energy balancing analytics has led to several innovative projects.
The Danish Energy Association’s flexible clearinghouse (FleCH) is an example.
The Internet of things makes it increasingly possible for energy resources to interact with the market. Throughout Europe, both R&D and business initia-
tives around flexibility are growing at a fast pace. There has been recent work
to create a market model study in Belgium for the enablement of distribution level flexibility. There is a consortium called the Universal Smart Energy Frame-
work (USEF) [7], which is a framework for the market design for smart energy
products and services that enables the trade of flexible energy. Seven Dutch and Belgium energy market participants established the USEF. The goal is to help all
participants in the energy system to benefit from flexible production, storage,
and use of energy. While there is an operational need for renewable energy opti- mization, an equally sized problem is the market participation of this genera-
tion, and often, the market puts the demands on the operation. As mentioned
in Section 1, security is always a shadow over concentrated collections of big data, and where there is money involved as in market operations, the security
risk is even higher.
Another interesting innovation in power system applications of big data and
analytics is the work done in the US Department of Energy’s ARRA Pacific
48 CHAPTER 3: The Role of Big Data and Analytics in Utility Innovation
Northwest regional demonstration project [8]. This brought 12 utilities across
five states into a full-scale transactive energy project, in which big data and advanced analytics are used to create a common “currency” of transactive
energy signals, from both suppliers and consumers, to manage power and
access. Other work at the Pacific Northwest National Lab that is relevant is the Grid Operations and Planning Technology Integrated Capabilities Suite
(Grid OPTICS) [9]. This work, done by the PNNL Future Power Grid Initiative,
has been discussed in the four workshops held to date on “next-generation ana- lytics for the future power grid.” There are additional industrial research pro-
jects applying big data and advanced analytics, done in cooperation with
electric power utilities, as described in [10,11].
4 GRID OPERATIONS
Innovations in grid operations, sometimes vaguely referred to today as smart
grid 2.0, include taking advantage of near real-time communications, extensive
sensor networks, and smarter equipment to get an improved view of the grid. This is step one; the operational improvement from improved fault detection
and localization, failure predictions, faster rerouting on the distribution sys-
tem, incorporation of smart meter data, and applying cognitive and algorithmic techniques is the next major step to a more resilient grid.
One aspect of improved grid operations comes from advances in phasor mea- surement unit technology. Not only are PMUs more pervasive, but also there is
a utility lead cooperation in wide-area PMU networks, in order to understand
what might be the ISO or national level events. The North American Synchro- phasor Initiative is a utility organized group [12]; obviously, when sampling
three phases at twice line frequency, a PMU is a major generator of big data.
Just as relevant though is the fact that it is now easier to obtain high-speed data communication networks, to allow analysis of phasor angle differences over
hundreds of miles of transmission system, making the analytics more action-
able. PMU data are used not only for transmission disturbances but also for security indications. The existence of Internet 2 and the existence of Eastern
Interconnect Data Sharing Network are examples of such new, efficient, and
effective data networks for the power system. Of course, GPS-synchronized time metadata enhance the value of the measurements. When coordinated with
existing electric power transmission system SCADA and energy management
systems (EMS), there is plenty of room for innovative analysis. Recently, a large Canadian utility was developing novel real-time, predictive analytics, and visu-
alization tools that may help generate early warnings for geomagnetic and other
large-scale disturbances. If there is a next step in this innovation, it might be to look at the use of machine-learning techniques, so that system improves its rec-
ognition of events over time. Examining geomagnetic storm influences is a
494 Grid Operations
problem that is significant to high-latitude power utilities. The motivation is a
need for an integrated system that supports decision-making from raw PMU data, whereas present systems are focused more on “monitoring” rather than
decision-making.
To expand on examples of big data and analytics proof-of-concept projects
from [11]: these illustrate innovations possible when vast amounts of data
are organized and correlated across traditional utility department boundaries.
Asset risk management and optimized repair-rehab-replace (ARMOR3): This
research project applied predictive and prescriptive analytics on big data to
identify, quantify, and ultimately optimize infrastructure maintenance and planning for electric assets including transformers, cables, poles, and circuits.
ARMOR3 converted data into information, insight, and foresight with the
aim of providing decision support across the complete electric infrastructure. The solution aimed for the ability to run a broad set of scenarios on the same
detailed data, prioritizing across multiple teams/groups. It offered predictive maintenance to identify and fix the next failure before it happens and generated
asset risk and investment profiles to enable 100% utilization (useful life) of the
asset while taking into account resource constraints.
Connectivity models: Using advanced analytics on advanced metering infrastruc-
ture (AMI), or smart meter, measurements, the connectivity model’s pilot appli-
cation inferred customer phase and customer-to-transformer connectivity, which is generally inaccurate or unknown. In fact, many good ideas for using
smart meter data in fault location and failure analysis were slowed down when
the accuracy levels of meter connectivity information were discovered to be insufficient for the algorithms. An accurate and sustainable connectivity model
is a key enabler of capabilities needed to improve the reliability and efficiency
of the distribution grid. Utility efforts to build and verify their connectivity database are labor- and resource-intensive. This analytics approach could help
radically lower the cost of such processes.
Customer intelligence: Through data-driven analytics, the customer intelligence
research project provided advanced customer segmentation capabilities, for
utilities to better understand their customers and the impact on utility opera- tions. Such customer insights could help a utility transform the relationship
with customers, improving the effectiveness of marketing campaigns from elec-
tric power retail and pilot programs by smarter targeting. This intelligence could also help grid stability, by understanding changes in customer dynamics, such
as demand response behavior, adoption of renewable energy, and usage of
plug-in electric vehicles. In addition, the utility might gain additional revenue protection by more accurately detecting energy theft.
Outage prediction and response optimization: This proof of concept used advanced weather prediction, predictive damage estimates, optimized crew positioning,
50 CHAPTER 3: The Role of Big Data and Analytics in Utility Innovation
and response planning to try to improve a utility’s preparation for, and
response to, weather-related power outages. With more than $14B in total annual lost value of service due to storms in the United States alone, improve-
ments in outage restoration and reduction in operational costs could lead to
significant value for the utility, in terms of both economic value and improved customer satisfaction.
Transactive energy: Expanding on the example of the PNNL DoE project [13], transactive energy management is the use of economic and control mecha-
nisms that could allow the dynamic balance of supply and demand across
the entire electric infrastructure, using “value” as a key economic operational parameter. All business and operational objectives and constraints can be
assigned positive or negative “values” and be incorporated into these transac-
tive signals.
Vermont renewable energy integration: The initial application of the Vermont
Weather Analytics Center (VTWAC) [14] research project focused on integra- tion of renewable power (wind and solar). The system was composed of several
components, which used an advanced weather prediction capability as a foun-
dation. This physics-based weather model was coupled to data-driven models of electricity demand, wind power, and solar power. The outputs of these prob-
abilistic models were used to assess the uncertainty in the predictions and to
drive a stochastic engine to assist the utility in avoiding congestion and improv- ing the stability of the transmission network.
Risk analytics for critical energy: This project had a goal to enable reliable
operation of gas pipeline network critical infrastructure by providing holistic analytics capabilities, including leak detection and condition-based mainte-
nance. As more gas turbines become peak demand-time supply units for renew-
able energy intermittency and some coal and oil plants are converted to gas due to current pricing, the relationship between gas supply and power grid has
intensified. For leak detection, the system employed physical and data analytics
on sensor data from SCADA, and the system provided early warnings of impending rupture events, capabilities to detect small leak events (which can-
not be detected from SCADA systems), and provided localization capability of
the leaks and ruptures. For condition-based maintenance, the system uses an advanced predictive optimization engine, and the condition-based mainte-
nance planning provided prediction of a condition deterioration curves for
assets, leveraging data from a programmable logic controller (PLC) and past maintenance hours. There was also prediction of future utilization of an asset
and computation of an effective condition assessment metric, such as effective run hours. Multiobjective optimization of maintenance and operation plans
used the condition deterioration curve, predicted future utilization, and condi-
tion assessment metrics. A what-if scenario allowed comparison of alternative maintenance plans.
515 Cognitive Computing On Big Data
Wide-area situational awareness: This research project used descriptive and pre-
scriptive analytics to interpret and summarize electric events in the transmis- sion system and provided insights during postevent analysis. It also used
predictive analytics to provide early warning indicators of complex events that
could affect grid stability and operations. The system sought to identify grid anomalies and alert operators to act before disturbances, such as geomagnetic
induced current (GIC) events, lead to grid collapse. The application also pro-
vided low-latency and high-throughput monitoring, archiving, reporting, advanced querying, and visualizing of the grid state.
In general, PMU analysis would aspire to the following design goals. In order to achieve high performance, the system would provide for the collection of large
amount of measurement data from the PMU/PDC with a high sample rate. As
utility size networks become ISO size and sometimes national in scope, there should be unlimited scale-up. For example, 1000 PMUs, at 60 Hz, yield 37.5 K
messages per second. Such goals typically require specialized streaming soft-
ware and databases optimized for time-series. Storing the data is but one aspect. For validation, analysis, and routing in real time, the design should ensure that
the content is valid and the analytic results are correct, be able to check for reli-
able data that have not been manipulated, and filter and route messages accord- ing to the needs of the application layer. Important big data also requires
storage and synchronization. There should be immediate storage to protect
against data loss, storage in a real-time database and an historical database, and synchronizing in case of failover with recovered data. Typical applications
are real-time analytics for island state detection and power swing recognition.
With the rising emphasis on cognitive analytics, algorithms and correlation of different data sources are based on platform capabilities. In the critical situa-
tions that draw upon PMU data to make optimal decisions, there is very little
time for the operating engineer to process multiple UIs or navigate incompat- ibilities between tools. Therefore, a consistent system configuration and data
model, driven by a single source solution, may be best in this mission critical
application.
5 COGNITIVE COMPUTING ON BIG DATA
Cognitive computing is a term from which people tend to infer their own
meaning. Here, it will be defined as a comprehensive set of capabilities based
on technologies such as machine learning, reasoning, and decision technolo- gies; natural language, speech, and vision technologies; human interface tech-
nologies; distributed and high-performance computing; and new computing
architectures and devices. In a commercially available solution [Ref. for IBM Watson], the computation algorithm continuously learns from previous inter-
actions, gaining in value and knowledge over time. The system can sense, create
52 CHAPTER 3: The Role of Big Data and Analytics in Utility Innovation
conclusions, and learn from experience. When integrated with traditional
computing and data sources, these capabilities are designed to solve a wide range of problems, boost productivity, and foster new discoveries across many
industries.
A typical distribution utility consists of two-thirds of the employees concentrat-
ing on field technical problems. The machine-learning-based algorithm could
take verbal questions from the field tech and integrate information from cur- rent and recent SCADA information, past written maintenance reports about
diagnosis of that equipment, and equipment supplier service documents (of
course keeping current with all manufacturers’ updates). Furthermore, each ser- vice call becomes another lesson to be learned. This now begins to attack the
“aging workforce” problem of lost experience due to retirement. While two
decades ago AI often involved programmer interviews with subject matter experts, now, algorithms can learn from past enterprise asset management sys-
tem service records and build that experience knowledge base. It also helps on
the other end—the recruitment of new field techs to whom the idea of working with a cognitive system may have a certain “Wired magazine” appeal.
The following is an example scenario of IBM Watson cognitive processing of big data in power systems, a service advisor for junior technicians.
For most customers, having faulty equipment accurately and reliably serviced
one of the most important drivers of their satisfaction with a manufacturer. When these machines require servicing, customers rely on the expertise of a
field technician to maintain the continuity of their business. However, the con-
sistency and quality of maintenance expertise across an organization can prove difficult in an industry that is constantly experiencing changes and increasing
complexity within its equipment.
With Watson for field service, field technicians can drastically minimize the
time spent diagnosing a problem and searching for a proper solution to a ser-
vice call. This will help them improve their first-time fix rate, allowing the cus- tomer to get back to running their equipment with fewer visits.
With a competitive environment that forces manufacturers to differentiate
themselves with superior service and with so many variables that can go into resolving a work order, empowering field technicians to make the right deci-
sions without needing to escalate the issue to higher levels has become a neces-
sity, not a “nice to have.”
Here is how a junior technician’s experience can be impacted. First, the tech
wants to start his day by getting a bird’s eye view of orders that need to be ful- filled. After logging in, he sees a comprehensive list of all the orders that are still
open and may decide to get a more detailed view on the 8:00 a.m. There, one
can see the key pieces of info needed to get this job done: the issue, the parts and
535 Cognitive Computing On Big Data
tools needed to bring, and even extra things that need to be done to fulfill this
customer’s unique level or expectation of support. In this case, the customer is at gold level, implying fast response. Upon arriving on site to fulfill the work
order, he is prepared to address the service request. He can view a fully compre-
hensive page detailing the customer’s order. Here, he can see the equipment model, exact error, customer complaint, and service history. Using information
from the service manuals and the symptoms reported by the customer, Watson
provides a recommendation on how to fix this order, along with an estimate of how long it will take to finish.
However, the tech may want to get an even more detailed view of the informa- tion Watson used to come to this conclusion. The system is an assistant, not a
replacement, and human judgment is still important.
Here, the cognitive system can show the exact passages from the relevant service manual or other sources it used as evidence for its suggestion. Vendor manuals,
which are often updated annually, are a large source of unstructured data. Such systems can understand not only the text in the manual but also the images and
diagrams. A social paradigm is also included. One can see comments and rat-
ings from other technicians who used this procedure to supplement the recom- mendation. The tech’s input and rating for this procedure, along with that
of other technicians, will help further train Watson to provide accurate
suggestions.
If the tech is sure, this suggestion might not be the best action to take for the
current problem, he can troubleshoot the issue to see the next best alternative.
Watson provides a list of the next best options it thinks can be taken to solve the order, ranked by confidence. It uses cases from prior work orders that are rel-
evant or similar to the issue being dealt with right now. Using the service his-
tory, another often untapped big data source, Watson behaves the same way that a senior engineer or expert-level technician would, taking all the informa-
tion available and depth of “experience” to help inform the best route to resolv-
ing a problem.
However, in the deployment of innovative technologies, there needs to be a
method of human interaction. To dig a little deeper into the problem, a natural language query can be done. Here, the tech can see more information related to
the issue. Again, this information is derived from the manuals and procedures
that have proved successful with this issue. However, this feature is used only when the prior two steps did not produce the proper solution, which is
unlikely.
To obtain a second opinion, the tech can open up the chat log and view what
has been said about the issue while providing his own input to peers. Here, all
the chats between with other engineers who have worked on problems like are
54 CHAPTER 3: The Role of Big Data and Analytics in Utility Innovation
available. One can view what is already been said or can communicate with
them directly if they are available. Even the inputs from the administrative and senior level are included.
Armed with these tools to navigate the sea of knowledge that goes into field service, every technician can be helped by an expert.
6 WEATHER, THE BIGGEST DATA TOPIC FOR POWER SYSTEMS
Weather historically has driven load demand, especially for residential con- sumption. Later, weather also became an essential element for modeling power
outages. The third frontier for weather as a source of big data has become pre-
diction of power output from renewable generation. Solar projects such as the DoE “SunShot” and wind turbine farm aggregate output, blade tip icing, and
tower vibration and stress have been the latest beneficiaries of advanced big
data and analytics for power systems.
To understand an application of weather as big data, consider what is essen-
tially a CFD model of the atmosphere [15]. These are examples of big data com-
putational science and statistical and measurement engineering. To attempt an understanding of the scope of “big” data here, one system handles 15–26 bil- lion API requests each day (peak—340,000/s), many initiated from individual
activation of a smartphone weather app. The system ingests over 100 Tb of third-party data and 300 Tb of proprietary data each day. It handles 60 different
types of data from 150 different sources. Given that, the mean forecast creation
time is about 10 ms, and the mean total delivery time is less than 300 ms. This content serves consumer forecast services and powers many distribution
portals.
The platform is cloud-based, ingests large volumes and types of data, and
delivers insights from precise weather data combined with location and other
data sets. The result is enabling companies, from electric power to utilities to aviation, to embed weather insights into decision support platforms, in order
to take a variety of responsive operational actions. The science of numerical
weather prediction involves a mathematical model that describes the physics of the atmosphere. Weather begins as the sun adds energy and gases rise from
the surface, resulting in convection. Unequal heating of the surface causes tem-
perature and pressure differences, which drives winds.
To provide the precision for wind turbine and solar forecasting requires high
spatial and temporal resolution, customized to the business needs. An exam- ple requirement would be a 1 km horizontal resolution, tens to hundreds of
meters of vertical resolution, and output every 10 min. In addition, a diversity
55References
of input data is used from public and private organizations. To be useful to
the consumer of the data, there is tailored dissemination and visualization. “Coupled” modeling is used to integrate this knowledge into decision-
making, and outputs are customized to the geographic area and end user’s
weather sensitivity. There is also a massive amount of quasistatic informa- tion, which is often not readily available at the required resolutions. This
means specific power system projects may have to capture the geographic
characteristics that locally affect weather, horizontally, vertically, and tempo- rally. Often for training and predictive validation, there is the capability
for retrospective analysis of past impactful events, via hindcasts and
reanalysis modes.
In power systems, associated data instrumentation for weather impacts include
SCADA/telemetry; AMI, also known as smart meters, providing end-point power measurement, including no power indications; geographic information
systems (GIS) for assets and infrastructure; electric network models from the
utility’s grid; and operational management systems, such as a utility’s outage management system. Cognitive methods now can use anecdotal data, such
as storm logs, social media, and thresholds for decision-making.
References [1] http://resourcecenter.smartgrid.ieee.org/ (accessed 27.11.16).
[2] http://submissions.mirasmart.com/PESGM2016/Itinerary/TechnicalProgramDetail.asp?id¼40 (accessed 27.11.16).
[3] https://www.ibm.com/us-en/marketplace/energy-analytics (accessed 27.11.16).
[4] https://www.ge.com/digital/predix (accessed 27.11.16).
[5] https://www.ibm.com/internet-of-things/iot-solutions/asset-management/ (accessed 27.11.16).
[6] http://new.abb.com/enterprise-software/asset-optimization-management (accessed 27.11.16).
[7] https://www.usef.energy/Home.aspx (accessed 27.11.16).
[8] http://www.pnwsmartgrid.org/ (accessed 27.11.16).
[9] http://gridoptics.pnnl.gov/ (accessed 27.11.16).
[10] http://www.research.ibm.com/client-programs/seri/ (accessed 27.11.16).
[11] C.A. Pickover (Ed.), IBM Journal of Research and Development, vol. 60, Issue 1. http://
ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber¼7384400 (accessed 27.11.16). [12] https://www.naspi.org/ (accessed 27.11.16).
[13] Pacific Northwest National Lab, July 9, 2015, Franny White (Battelle). http://www.pnnl.gov/ news/release.aspx?id¼4210 (accessed 27.11.16).
[14] M. Sinn, F. Dinuzzo, IBM Research Blog, May 14, 2015. https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/
2015/05/demand-forecasting-by-means-of-data-driven-technique/ (accessed 27.11.16).
[15] J. Davis, Information Week, May 2, 2016. http://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/the-
weather-company-brings-together-forecasting-and-iot-/d/d-id/1325362 (accessed 27.11.16).
56 CHAPTER 3: The Role of Big Data and Analytics in Utility Innovation
Further Reading Cybersecurity in the Electric Power Industry
[1] N. Hitpas, George Mason University School of Business, February 8, 2015. http://business.gmu. edu/news/981-mason-ibm-nsf-partnership-produces-cybersecurity-report/ (accessed 27.11.16).
[2] N.Hitpas,GeorgeMasonUniversitySchoolofBusiness,November16,2015.http://business.gmu. edu/news/1104-mason-ibm-nsf-partnership-yields-second-cyber-report/ (accessed 27.11.16).
Cloud Computing for Electrical Power Utilities
[3] B. Ramsay, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, Final Resolutions Adopted at the 2016 Annual Meeting, November 16, 2016. http://pubs.naruc.org/pub/
4FDD6D6B-F303-DE7B-5B46-7B25C04E6317 (accessed 27.11.16).
Analytics for Utilities
[4] http://www.utilityanalyticsweek.com/ (accessed 27.11.16).
[5] http://www.utilityanalyticssummit.com/ (accessed 27.11.16).
Big Data and Analytics
[6] D. Cnota, Infogix, November 16, 2016. http://www.infogix.com/press-releases/infogix-identifies-
top-ten-transformative-data-trends-2017/ (accessed 26.12.16).
[7] Big Data University—Analytics, Big Data, and Data Science Courses. http://bigdatauniversity.
com/ (accessed 04.01.17).
[8] IEEE Utility Big Data Workshop, http://2017isap.tamu.edu/ieee-utility-big-data-workshop/
- The Role of Big Data and Analytics in Utility Innovation
- Introduction of Big Data and Analytics as an Accelerator of Innovation
- Approaches to Data Driven Innovation
- Integration of Renewable Energy
- Grid Operations
- Cognitive Computing on Big Data
- Weather, the Biggest Data Topic for Power Systems
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-4---Frameworks-for-Big-Data-Integration_2018_Big-Data-Application-in.pdf
CHAPTER 4
Frameworks for Big Data Integration, Warehousing, and Analytics
Feng Gao Tsinghua University Energy Internet Research Institute, Beijing, China
57
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Big data is a term for large and complex datasets that traditional processing approaches are not suit-
able to deal with them. Big data usually comes from the Internet, enterprise systems, Internet of Things, and other information systems. Data collection and preparation, storage management, data
processing, data analysis, and knowledge presentation would generate new insights to support
decision-making and business intelligent operation. Smart grid is a developing trend of electrical
power energy industry. The core message is to implement the next generation of cyber-physical sys- tems shaping future energy industry that is based on a deep merge of operational technology and
internet information technology. The growth of smart grid is dependent on the availability of high
performance computing (HPC) and analytics technology to process a massive amount of data set. Deployment of advanced technologies within smart grid and usage of state-of-the-art computing
systems provide utility companies with innovative capabilities. These advances lead to unprece-
dented explosion of data volumes. As smart grid operations will leverage advanced metering infra-
structure to drive more real time decision-making and operational activities, complex event processing and stream computing are needed for the modern smart grid. The chapter discusses
one core technique that would support the growth of smart grid, big data with HPC, with a focus
on the platform, data integration, warehousing, and analytics that are particularly adaptive to han-
dle a variety of characteristics of energy industry data. Finally, the chapter summarizes and proposes a comprehensive, technical solution for smart grid platform with applications focusing on comple-
mentary operation of multiform energy system that supports all aspects within a data lifetime
cycle, e.g., acquisition, storage, analytics, and visualization.
1 INTRODUCTION
In recent years, big data quickly becomes a “hot topic” in industry and acade-
mia. “Nature”, “Science,” and other magazines have published special issues to explore the challenges and opportunities of big data [1,2]. “Data have pene-
trated into every industry and business area today and have become an impor-
tant factor in production. The discovery and use of big data signal a new wave of productivity growth and consumer surplus,” said McKinsey & Company, a
leading management consulting firm.
Big data is a term for large and complex datasets that traditional data processing
approaches are not suitable to deal with them. Big data usually comes from the
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00004-8
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
58 CHAPTER 4: Frameworks for Big Data Integration, Warehousing, and Analytics
Internet, enterprise systems, Internet of Things, and other information systems.
Data collection and preparation, storage management, data processing, data analysis, and knowledge presentation [3] would generate new insights to
support decision-making and business intelligent operation.
Smart grid is the direction and trend of the electrical power industry evolution.
Smart grid is a new generation of physical information systems which integrate
the advanced communication information technology and physical energy systems. The essence is to provide comprehensive energy services based on
complementary operation of multienergy sources. The core is the energy pro-
duction, transportation, distribution, and consumption based on distributed and renewable energy. At the same time, it can integrate heat, electric power,
gas, and even water together [4]. Smart grid business model includes two
aspects: integrated energy, that is, electric power, gas, and other complementary multiexchange; integrated services, such as energy security monitoring, energy
efficiency management, operation and maintenance services, and green energy
deployment services [4]. Smart grid is based on integrated, high-speed commu- nication network, and makes full use of advanced sensing, measurement tech-
nology, optimization control technology, and decision support technology to
realize the reliable, safe, economical, efficient, and environment-friendly goals. The intelligent operation of the smart grid is based on a high degree of
“observability” and “controllability.” The observability and controllability
are based on the need to obtain real-time panoramic data that can reflect the operating status of the system [5]. Thus, the high-performance data analysis
technology will become a significant support for the development of smart
grid. One of the core technologies of supporting the development of smart grid will be big data analytics with high performance computing (HPC). We mainly
focus on frameworks for big data integration, warehousing, and analytics.
2 FRAMEWORKS FOR BIG DATA PLATFORM
The electric power industry is facing unprecedented challenges caused by extremely high volume and high frequency measurement data. According to
the Navigant Research Report, the estimated installed base of smart meters
worldwide will surpass 1.1 billion by 2022 [6]. Advanced metering infrastruc- ture (AMI) typically collects electricity usage data in the range of 15 min to 1 h.
This is up to a 3000-fold increase in the amount of data utilities would have
processed in the past [7]. Meanwhile, synchrophasor is being deployed around the global that collects a large volume of low-latency, real-time streaming mea-
surement data. Phasor measure unit (PMU) can measure AC waveforms (volt-
ages and currents) typically at a rate of 48 samples per cycle (2880 samples per second for 60 Hz systems) [8]. Just one phasor data concentrator collecting data
from 100 PMUs of 20 measurements each at 30-Hz sampling rate generates
over 50 GB of data 1 day [9].
592 Frameworks For Big Data Platform
Big data analytics provides a suite of techniques for the utility industry that are
deemed to resolve these challenges. The in-memory calculation engine and par- allel computing framework, Hadoop/MapReduce and Spark, are ready for han-
dling an extremely large scale of dataset; on the other hand, the stream
processing engine, Storm, Streams, and Spark Streaming are built to analyze data in motion and act on information as it is happening.
Consequently, big data could be applied to improve both power system short-term operations and long-term planning processes. The promising
applications for big data analytics include detection of energy theft, strategic
adoption for electric vehicle and rooftop solar integration, fine granularity load forecast and renewable generation forecast, distribution system topology
identification, online asset risk assessment, distribution system voltage
and var. optimization, customer segmentation & targeting, and revenue protection, etc. [6].
The architecture of big data platform includes data integration, warehousing, analytics, and combines the demand of smart grid to put forward a set of frame-
works which have excellent computing ability and can adapt to various busi-
ness requirements. The popular big data framework is based on the Apache Hadoop ecosystem, the Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS) is used as
the underlying file system. Yet Another Resource Negotiator (YARN), as
resource management and task scheduling tool, uniformly distributes Hadoop MapReduce and Spark to support multiple business scenarios and business
requirements. The specific architecture is shown in Fig. 1.
FIG. 1
Frameworks of big data platform.
60 CHAPTER 4: Frameworks for Big Data Integration, Warehousing, and Analytics
A system performing data science requires some formats of data storage. For
decades, the term “database” has been more or less synonymous with relational database management systems, which are widely used in power system.
Recently there has been increased adoption of Not only SQL (NoSQL)
databases with the primary motivation being horizontal scaling to handle big data [10].
The Lambda architecture is designed to handle massive quantities of data by taking advantage of both batch- and stream-processing methods. It attempts
to balance latency, throughput, and fault tolerance by using batch processing
to provide comprehensive and accurate precomputed views, while simulta- neously using real-time stream processing to provide dynamic views. The
Lambda architecture has three major components: the batch layer, the serving
layer, and the speed layer. The batch layer manages the immutable master data- set, and precomputes batch views, whereas the serving layer indexes batch views
and loads them as needed, and the speed layer handles new data and updated
real-time views.
2.1 Architecture
The new generation of big data frameworks features in support of semistructured,
unstructured data processing, support data visualization, also with higher proces-
sing performance and easier operation and maintenance features. Lambda archi- tecture is the reference model for the next generation of big data frameworks,
which was first proposed by Twitter. As shown in Fig. 2, Lambda architecture
contains three layers, batch layer, speed layer, and serving layer [11].
Ideally, any data access procedure can start with a single argument input and
a function result output, but if the data reaches a significant level (such as
Batch recompute
Recompute views
Map reduce
Partial aggregate
Partial aggregate
Batch views
Real-time views
Real-time incremental
Process stream
New data stream
Real-time data
SparkIncrement views
Partial aggregate
Merge Merged views
All data (HDFS)
FIG. 2
Lambda architecture.
613 Big Data With HPC
PB (petabyte)) and needs to support real-time queries, it can be very expensive.
Lambda architecture introduces the concept of batch view, which preevaluates part of the query results so that when the query needs to be executed, the results
can be read from the batch view. A precomputed view can be indexed, thus
enabling fast random reading.
The batch view is generated from the batch layer, the use of batch layer is to
make the large data small, to use computing resources to improve real-time query performance effectively.
Speed layer uses the same data processing logic as the batch layer, but the main
difference is that the speed layer deals with real-time streaming data and batch layer deals with bulk off-line data. Another difference is that to meet the min-
imum computing delay, the speed layer does not read all new data at the same
time; on the contrary, it will receive one piece of new data and update the speed view. Speed layer is an incremental calculation, but not reoperation.
2.2 Storage
Energy data are of multiple sources and heterogeneous features [12], for struc-
ture data storage, open-source database MySQL and PostgreSQL are the better
choices. For unstructured data storage, NoSQL databases such as HBase, Mon- goDB, and Cassandra are the most appropriate.
The raw data can be stored in MongoDB (cluster mode), and the data schema of the cloud computing platform is shared. When Spark/MapReduce calculation
engine is ready, the data will be automatically imported into HDFS through
Kafka. The results will be exported back to MongoDB via Kafka, as well as to other data sources already deployed in the system, such as PostgreSQL or HDFS.
2.3 Security
Hadoop’s security certification is based on the Kerberos. Kerberos is a network
authentication protocol. Users only need to enter authentication information
to verify that they can access multiple Kerberos-based services by obtaining Kerberos ticket. Single sign-in of the machine can also be done based on this
protocol. Hadoop itself does not create user accounts but uses the Kerberos
protocol for user authentication.
3 BIG DATA WITH HPC
HPC is the use of parallel processing techniques for running advanced applica- tion programs efficiently, reliably, and quickly. HPC is a critical component for
frameworks for big data integration, warehousing, and analytics.
62 CHAPTER 4: Frameworks for Big Data Integration, Warehousing, and Analytics
3.1 System Architecture (Fig. 3)
(1) Monolithic architecture
FIG. 3
Monolithi
Monolithic architecture is a very common form of computer software
architecture, which is often layered by functions. Common layers are the
presentation layer, business logic layer, and data layer [13]. The business logic layer can be modularized to components by different business
responsibilities and functions. The “monolithic architecture” is a
“single block” at the physical deployment architecture level. It is usually compiled, packaged, deployed, and maintained as a single application.
(2) Microservice architecture
The microservice architecture is a new concept, which divides the
application into a series of small services. Each service focuses on a single function, runs in a separate process, and has a clear boundary
between services. Services can communicate with each other with light
protocols (such as HTTP/RESTful), to achieve a complete application that meets business and user demands [14].
3.2 Service Type
HPC services currently have a variety of ways, which are recognized by IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, BaaS, etc. [15].
(1) IaaS
IasS is short for “Infrastructure-as-a-Service,” usually as a hardware server rental service. IaaS service providers provide off-site server,
c architecture vs microservice architecture.
633 Big Data With HPC
virtualization, storage, and network hardware for users to rent. It can
save maintenance costs and office space for users. Some of the successful
IaaS products include Amazon’s AWS cloud service, Microsoft’s Azure, Alibaba’s Aliyun, and Tencent’s Qcloud.
(2) PaaS
PaaS is short for “Platform-as-a-Service.” PaaS provide a complete
application runtime environment, middleware, database, and so on.
Developers only need to upload and deploy the code; the application can run up. PaaS not only reduces the cost of IT operation and
maintenance but also eliminates a lot of development workload. PaaS
platform includes Google’s App Engine, Baidu’s App Engine (BAE), and Sina’s App Engine (SAE).
(3) SaaS
SaaS is short for “Software-as-a-Service.” Usually, it provides an entirely web-based application, the user does not need to consider any software
development, deployment, and do not have to worry about server
hardware,bandwidth,justdirectlypurchaseandthesoftwareisreadytogo.
(4) BaaS
BaaS is short for “Backend-as-a-Service.” It is a new PaaS-based cloud
service. It is designed to provide backend cloud services for mobile and web applications, including cloud data, storage, account management,
messaging, social media integration, big data analysis interfaces, and
other services [9]. The BaaS platform provides users with a variety of core components and microservices (middleware) to complete specific
functions and meet individual demands.
3.3 Internet of Things
The Internet of Things is to let devices sense, communicate, interact, and col- laborate within a network. From the perspective of monolithic architecture,
the traditional IoT cloud computing platform consists of three layers [16], as
shown in Fig. 4.
The protocol layer acts as a gateway and accesses the IoT devices through MQTT
(Message Queue Telemetry Transport), XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Pres- ence Protocol), or other proprietary protocols, and provides APIs (Application
Programming Interfaces) and corresponding SDKs (Software Development
Kits) for other Internet devices and applications [17–19]. IoT devices can also directly connect to the gateway through WiFi, 3G, 4G, and other network com-
munication module, and complete the data transfer. To ensure the stability of
data access and push services in the high-concurrency environment, load bal- ancing mechanism is usually implemented, and the number of gateways is
extended according to the traffic [18,20].
Dev ice
Dev ice
Dev ice
Bac ken d
APP
SDKAPI
Logic
Big data
Log Messa
ge queue
Databa se
Service layer
Logic layer
Protocol layer MQTT XMPP
Device manag ement
Online manag ement
Mornit oring
...
...
Private
Route
FIG. 4
IoT high-performance computing architecture.
64 CHAPTER 4: Frameworks for Big Data Integration, Warehousing, and Analytics
The business logic layer is mainly based on the user’s request parameters,
matching the target hardware, the business data transfer distribution, the com- pletion of the business system data subscription and distribution, to achieve
intelligent device control and monitoring [19,20].
Core services layer provides all the essential services, including data storage database, message queue, log management, big data platform docking, and
monitoring warning services [21].
3.4 HPC Platform for Smart Grid
The HPC platform abstracts and unifies backend system’s requirements in most
scenarios, and implements a common, powerful, customizable BaaS (Backend as a Service) service through cloud engine.
Cloud engine is the hosting service launched by the smart grid HPC platform.
The engine is based on runtime environment and able to run backend applica- tions. The engine supports multiinstance service load balancing and scaling.
(1) Cloud functions, hooks, and background tasks
Smart grid HPC platform provides cloud function, function hook, and
background tasks. Through the cloud function, users can easily customize the business logic based on data interaction and can be
exposed through the routing interface. Function hook allows the user to
define a function that will be called when target event happened, such as new object saved or object modified. Background tasks enable you to set
nonblocking tasks and perform tasks such as big data processing.
(2) Real-time data streaming
HTTP protocol is well known as the “request/response” model, but this
model does have a lot of limitations. In many scenarios, we want the
654 Big Data With Complex Event Processing
server to actively send notifications to the browser, such as notifying the
browser to refresh the data display in real time when receiving new
meter data. HTML5’s WebSocket protocol allows the server to send packets to the client directly, so it can make real-time data streaming
possible.
To ensure the communication connectivity and service scalability of WebSocket
in the multiinstance cloud engine environment, we take the necessary measures to prevent WebSocket from becoming the bottleneck of the whole service. If the
user’s service has high throughput, the single instance of the cloud engine may
cause the packets blocking. To avoid such situation, we use Redis as a global message queue to handle all messages’ distribution and subscription. This will
not only ensure the reliability and efficiency but also let the whole cloud engine
scalable.
The collection, storage, and analytical processing of relevant data sets are a key
strategic objective of nearly every modern business entity, and the utility sector is one which may see large improvements in operational efficiency and plan-
ning by having situational awareness of the smart grid through proper manage-
ment of data.
The collection and organized storage of data is managed by a well-developed
collection of online transaction processing (OLTP) database systems, which are capable of reliably organizing vast quantities of data when deployed as a
storage cluster. These systems are typically oriented around the goal of individ-
ual read/write operations to the database, while ensuring accuracy and consis- tency within the stored data.
For developing analyses and insights from a collected data set, the data access
pattern is likely to vary from an OLTP system significantly, which calls for the use of an alternative system for querying the data set, typically referred to as a
data warehouse. For an online analytics processing (OLAP) platform in a data
warehouse [16], rather than the database interaction consisting of many indi- vidual read/write operations, commonly there will be a small number of users
of the OLAP platform performing large batch-read operations for analyzing
aggregated data over the dimensions of time, location, etc. The commonly que- ried data will often be organized into “cubes” of preaggregated results, and any
query which cannot be addressed by the preaggregated results of the OLAP cube
will be served by a partially denormalized data structure called a star schema.
4 BIG DATA WITH COMPLEX EVENT PROCESSING
For modern big data platform systems, the ability for the timely reaction to the
occurrence of real-world situations in the system environment has become a
66 CHAPTER 4: Frameworks for Big Data Integration, Warehousing, and Analytics
fundamental requirement. This applies to many different applications, e.g., in
smart grid, automatic stock trading, logistics, and production control. For example, in a smart grid scenario, the detection of a divergence between the
energy consumption and the energy production can enable the rapid deploy-
ment of an intelligent Demand Response system, adapting the energy demand of intelligent appliances to the energy production, which reduces the demand
for operating reserve provided in expensive supplemental power plants. In such
applications, incoming data streams of low level information arrive from het- erogeneous sources at high rates, and need to be processed in real time in order
to detect more complex situations. Those data streams can be busy, and their
rates fluctuate tremendously.
To tackle the problem, the paradigm of real-time complex event processing
(CEP) has emerged as a favorable approach. CEP is a new big data integration, warehousing, analytics technique which takes data as unordered series of events
coming from different sources. CEP has found wide uses in industries such as
financial systems, homeland security, and sensor data processing. In each of these cases, the common element is that data from edge devices must be pro-
cessed “on the fly,” whether it comes in streams or asynchronous bursts. The
CEP technology is capable of applying complex queries to multiple data streams simultaneously to detect specified conditions (events), thus triggering
appropriate actions in real time.
CEP can be used in a variety of utility business functions. These include meter
data management, demand response, fault detection, outage management, bill-
ing, and remote equipment monitoring, etc. CEP is a flexible tool, and when included in an overall data management strategy and architecture, it can tre-
mendously improve the flexibility needed to implement the data management
solutions for smart grid.
Smart grid is inherently complex due to the dynamic nature of power genera-
tion equipment, the use of complex technologies, the long distance of electric
power transportation, and the instantaneous balance of production and con- sumption. Electric power networks are among the world’s most complex
human-made systems. The problems existing in power system fit naturally
within the paradigm of CEP.
CEP is the use of technologies to track streams of data from multiple sources, to
analyze trends, patterns, and events in real time in order to respond to them as quickly as possible. It can be further leveraged to monitor diverse and disparate
data sources or events, brining organizations enhanced situational knowledge
and increased business agility. CEP allows users to access events that happened in the past and use them in any order. The event can come from various sources
and may occur over a long period of time. CEP requires sophisticated event inter-
preters, event pattern definition and matching along with correlation techniques.
674 Big Data With Complex Event Processing
With CEP, incoming data is being continuously monitored and acted upon
using declarative conditions. Moreover, the data monitoring and processing works at a near-zero latency. Different events may come from different sources,
and the CEP system can assemble a complex event to internally model the com-
ponents as one object. A CEP system is aimed at solving the velocity problem of big data, while data comes as a stream of predefined events. The sliding window
approach used by CEP systems ensures that only a portion of actual data simul-
taneously passes into the main memory, whereas the old events may be dis- carded or archived. This way, all the data does not have to fit into system
memory, but still the most recent events can be efficiently analyzed.
In a smart grid, the data sources may include PMUs (typically 2880 samples per
second), SCADA (typically acquiring data every 2–5 s), AMI (typically acquiring data every 1–15 min), weather data, and third-party data, etc. Since data is transferred at a steady high-speed rate, the input data may be treated as streams.
The data is continuously evaluated by queries. Fig. 5 describes the system archi-
tecture of CEP.
The state-of-the-art CEP takes advantage of stream computing to handle
unstructured data and large numbers of business events per second. CEP pushes data through highly sophisticated analytics processes to deliver real-time ana-
lytics results on data in motion, to help increase responsiveness when dealing
with high levels of input. It enables both descriptive (simple) and predictive (sophisticated) analytics to support real-time decisions. Essentially, CEP
enables organizations to capture and analyze as much data as they can handle
at any time and in near-real time.
Apache Spark is a fast and general engine for large-scale data processing. It is a
unified platform combining Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, and MLLib for
machine learning and GraphX. Spark now boasts the ability to not only process streams of data at scale but also to “query” that data at scale using SQL-like syn-
tax. This ability makes Spark a viable alternative to established CEP platforms
and provides advantages over other open-source stream processing systems. Especially with regard to the former, Spark will now allow for the creation of
“rules” that can run within stream “windows” of time and make decisions with
the ease of SQL queries. This is a remarkably powerful combination.
Spark Streaming is an interesting extension to Spark that adds support for con-
tinuous stream processing. All the strengths of Spark’s unified programming model apply to Spark Streaming, which is particularly relevant for real-time
analytics that combine historical data with newly collected data. Spark Stream-
ing ingests data from any source, including file systems such as S3 and HDFS. Users can express sophisticated algorithms easily using high-level functions
to process the data streams. The core innovation behind Spark Streaming
is to treat streaming computations as a series of deterministic microbatch
FIG. 5
Big data complex event processing architecture.
6 8
C H A P T E R
4 :
F r a m e w o r k s fo r B ig
D a ta
In te
g r a tio
n , W a r e h o u s in g , a n d A n a ly tic
s
695 Application Of Big Data Techniques For Power Systems
computations on small time intervals, executed using Spark’s distributed data
processing framework. Microbatching unifies the programming model of streaming with that of batch use cases and enables strong fault recovery guar-
antees while retaining high performance. The processed data can then be stored
in any file system (including HDFS), database (including Hbase), or live dashboards.
5 APPLICATION OF BIG DATA TECHNIQUES FOR POWER SYSTEMS
A major goal of developing big data techniques in smart grid is to promote complementary operation of multiform energy system that will achieve energy
cascading utilization and boosts the energy efficiency. Distributed combined
cooling heating and power (CCHP) system develops as a novel energy supply way in recent years, which is regarded as environment-friendly, economical,
and reliable option for the future [17]. CCHP is one of the key components
for successful operation of multiform energy system.
The typical primary movers for CCHP include steam turbines, gas turbines,
reciprocating internal combustion engines, and microturbines, etc., which are integrated with thermally activated cooling technologies. Due to its unique
characteristics and complexities, the new research needs to be done on system
design, control, operation, and planning. Consequently, optimization and eco- nomic evaluation techniques based on thermo-dynamics and thermo-
economic principles are critical to the successful deployment of CCHP system.
A data-driven method for better operating multiform energy system, with a con- sideration of uncertainty on price and demand, would be beneficial for direct-
ing practical system operation.
The multiform energy system employs more than one thermos-dynamic cycle.
For example, a CCHP refers to the combination of gas turbine generators with
exhaust waste heat boilers and thermally activated chilling machines for the production of electric power, heating, and cooling energy together [18]. The
overall efficiency of CCHP can reach around 80%–90% due to energy cascading utilization [19]. The CCHP is particularly fit for multiform energy system where distributed solar, wind, energy storage, and load are systematically integrated.
The CCHP can provide most of heating and cooling energy, and partially fulfill
electricity demand. The outstanding electricity demand is compensated by power grid (Fig. 6). The overall reliability of energy supply is improved by a
combination of distributed and centralized models. Our platform implements
a general methodology to optimize CCHP performance and introduces a dynamic model to evaluate CCHP operating cost and combine power network
analysis with heating/cooling energy dispatch [20]. The data-driven method is
Oil
CCHP
Cloud based dispatching system
Heat
Cool
Microgrid
Coal
Natural gas
Y- Axis
Y -A
xi s
Y -A
xi s
Pipeline
Pipeline
Fuel Storage
Service
Residential
Industrial
$
t
$
t
$
t
FIG. 6
CCHP based multienergy form system.
70 CHAPTER 4: Frameworks for Big Data Integration, Warehousing, and Analytics
demonstrated on a simulated data set. The reduction of total cost is about 20%
compared to the old design of electricity, heating, and cooling energy being produced separately.
Fig. 7 demonstrates mechanism of a CCHP system. Quality fuel (e.g., natural gas, oil, or gasified coal) is fed into furnace together with compressed air.
The burning of fuel produces high temperature and high pressure air that is pro-
pelling the turbine and generate electricity. The waste heat is fed into furnace to drive chilling machine and produce cooling energy in summer, heating energy
in winter. There are also electric-powered heating or cooling devices to produce
the rest of energy. The outstanding electricity demand is compensated by municipal power grid.
Fig. 8 shows electricity, heating, and cooling production by CCHP based on data-driven analytics. During the price peak spots, the CCHP reduces produc-
tion and microgrid uses more electricity from power grid. The reduction of total
cost is about 20% compared to the old design of electricity, heating, and cool- ing energy being provided separately.
The demonstration system is connected to a variety of power consumption and
electricity generation device located on the campus of Tsinghua University, including teaching buildings, dormitories, and other functional buildings.
The data-driven techniques are based on a general methodology called Collo-
cation Algorithm to optimize CCHP performance and apply a dynamic model
Hour 2
C o
o l d
e m
a n
d (G
J) H
e a
t d
e m
a n
d (G
J) E
le ct
ri ci
ty d
e m
a n d
(M W
h )
1
0 0.8
0.6
0.4
0.14
0.12
0.10
10 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
FIG. 8
Electricity, heating, cooling energy production by CCHP.
High temp Low temp High temp Low temp
Heating load
Heat recovery gas furnace/ electric heater
Cooling Load
H e
a t
Heat recovery chilling
machine
Turbine Distribution
Power gridFuel
Electric chilling
machine Feeder
Electricity load
Electricity
FIG. 7
Heating, cooling, and electricity provided by CCHP.
715 Application Of Big Data Techniques For Power Systems
to evaluate CCHP operating cost and combine power network analysis with
heating/cooling energy dispatch [21–24].
The data is updated every hour. The updated data includes current energy cost
and price. Python is used to implement a simulator as data upload tool, the
simulator upload data from cloud engine’s open API. Once the data is stored in the database, the cloud engine will start a background task to let the big data
platform perform data calculation and analysis. The results will be automati-
cally stored in the corresponding database and ready for the frontend page. Plotly.js, leaflet, and other web components are used for data visualization.
72 CHAPTER 4: Frameworks for Big Data Integration, Warehousing, and Analytics
Based on the WebSocket protocol, user’s browser will open a long connection
when a user is loading the web page. At the same time, data will be sent through WebSocket in real time. Also, with react.js’s support, the web page can update
without a refresh.
6 CONCLUSION
Big data is a term for large and complex datasets that traditional data processing
approaches are not suitable to deal with them. Smart grid is a new generation of
physical information systems that is deeply integrated with existing energy sys- tems and internet technologies. In this chapter, we propose a conceptual data-
driven distributed framework which is designed to enable big data integration,
warehousing, and analytics capabilities within a developing smart grid. The chosen framework is modular and hierarchical, and is specifically designed
such that the data management and control hierarchy align precisely with
the typical hierarchy of smart grid. We also propose a new big data processing platform for a smart grid, based on the Lambda architecture, where a real-time
CEP engine is embedded in the speed layer. We discuss the advantages for big
data platform, HPC, CEP, and complementary operation of multiform energy system. The development of smart grid counts on big data integration, ware-
housing, and analytics. Finally, this chapter proposes a case to optimize CCHP
performance by combining power network analysis with heating/cooling energy dispatch. The reduction of total cost is about 20% compared to the
old design of electricity, heating, and cooling energy being produced separately.
In future, we will integrate solar, battery, electric vehicles, and other green distributed energy devices into our platform, to push the combination of big
data, cloud computing, and smart grid technology development.
Acknowledgment The author would like to thank my colleagues, particularly Rong Zeng, Rui Fu, Jun Hu, Wendong
Zhu, and Chris Saunders, for their contributions.
References [1] G. David, Big data, Nature 455 (7209) (2008) 1–136.
[2] L. Wouter, W. John, Dealing with big data, Science 331 (6018) (2011) 639–806.
[3] J. Han, M. Kamber, J. Pei, Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques, The Morgan Kaufmann
Series in Data Management Systems, third ed., Morgan Kaufmann, 2011.
[4] Z. Dong, J. Zhao, F. Wen, Y. Xue, From smart grid to energy internet: basic concept and
research framework, Autom. Electr. Power Syst. 38 (15) (2014) 1–11.
[5] Y. Song, G. Zhou, Y. Zhu, Present status and challenges of big data processing in smart grid,
Power System Technology 37 (4) (2013) 927–935.
73Further Reading
[6] Navigant Research, Smart electric meters, Advanced Metering Infrastructure, and Meter Com-
munications: Global Market Analysis and Forecasts, Available from: www.navigantresearch. com/research/smart-meters, 2013.
[7] N. Yu, S. Shah, R. Johnson, R. Sherick, M. Hong, K. Loparo, Big data analytics in power dis-
tribution systems, IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference, Washington, DC, 2015.
[8] Wikipedia, Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phasor_measurement_unit.
[9] L. Xie, Y. Chen, P.R. Kumar, Dimensionality reduction of synchrophasor data for early anom-
aly detection: linearized analysis, IEEE Trans. Power Syst. 29 (6) (2014) 2784–2794.
[10] N. Marz, Big Data Lambda Architecture [EB/OL]. (2016–08-03)[2012–09-05], http://www. databasetube.com/database/big-data-lambda-architecture/.
[11] D. Li, S. Geng, J. Zheng, Development tendency of power big data in energy internet circum- stances, Mod. Electr. Pow. 32 (5) (2015) 10–14.
[12] J.-Z. Luo., et al., Cloud computing: architecture and key technologies, J. China Inst. Commun. 32 (7) (2011) 3–21.
[13] P. Sareen, Cloud computing: types, architecture, applications, concerns, virtualization and
role of IT governance in cloud, Int. J. Adv. Res. Comput. Sci. Softw. Eng. 3 (3) (2013) 533–538.
[14] R. Machado, R. El-Khoury, Monolithic Architecture, Prestel Publishing, Munich, 1995.
[15] S. Newman, Building Microservices, O’Reilly Media, Sebastopol, CA, 2015.
[16] J. Wen, Y. Shi, Research on the cloud-based computing service platform for the mega eyes,
Telecommun. Sci. 6 (2010) 48–52.
[17] Q. Liu, L. Cui, H. Chen, Key technologies and applications of internet of things, Comput. Sci.
37 (6) (2010) 1–10.
[18] H. Huang, J. Deng, Discussion on the technology and application of IOT gateway, Telecom-
mun. Sci. 4 (2010) 20–24.
[19] Z. Qian, Y. Wang, IoT technology and application, Acta Electron. Sin. 40 (5) (2012) 1023–1029.
[20] Q. Sun, J. Liu, S. Li, Internet of things: summarize on concepts, architecture and key technol- ogy problem, J. Beijing Univ. Posts Telecommun. 33 (3) (2010) 1–9.
[21] D. Wu, “Multiple Objective Thermodynamic Optimization and Application Study of Distrib-
uted Combined Cooling Heating and Power System (PhD dissertation), Shanghai Jiao tong University, 2008.
[22] H. Hui, C. Yu, F. Gao, Combined cycle resource scheduling in ERCOT nodal market, in: 2011
IEEE Power Energy Society General Meeting Proceeding, Detroit, MI, 2011.
[23] Y. Liu, “Optimal Design of Distributed Combined Cooling, Heating, and Power System (MS
thesis), North China Electric University, 2012.
[24] F. Gao, Integration of Wind Generation With Storage Techniques (MS thesis), Department of
Economics, Iowa State University, 2008.
Further Reading [1] J. Cao, M. Yang, D. Zhang, Energy internet: an infrastructure for cyber-energy integration,
South. Power Syst. Technol. 8 (4) (2014) 1–10.
- Frameworks for Big Data Integration, Warehousing, and Analytics
- Introduction
- Frameworks for Big Data Platform
- Architecture
- Storage
- Security
- Big Data With HPC
- System Architecture (Fig. 3)
- Service Type
- Internet of Things
- HPC Platform for Smart Grid
- Big Data With Complex Event Processing
- Application of Big Data Techniques for Power Systems
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgment
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-5---Moving-Toward-Agile-Machine-Learning-_2018_Big-Data-Application-.pdf
CHAPTER 5
Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
Yuxun Zhou, and Reza Arghandeh UC Berkeley and Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
77
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
This chapter starts with a brief discussion on classical supervised and unsupervised learning para-
digms. The focus is not to give an extensive review of the field, which is impossible due to its many ramifications, but rather to equip the readers with fundamental ideas and popular approaches for
regression, classification, dimension reduction, etc. The chapter moves on with a discussion on
the important issue of model selection (hyperparameter tuning), which is pivotal to the performance
of those off-the-shelf machine learning (ML) tools. Because all ML tools are “garbage in garbage out,” the next section of this chapter is devoted to the problem of feature selection (FS), in which existing FS
methods and their recent variants are presented in some depth. The rest of this chapter is devoted to
the introduction of recent schemes of ML that seem promising for power system data analysis appli- cations. The topics include but are not limited to semisupervised learning, multitask learning, transfer
learning, multiview learning, etc. Overall this chapter aims at providing power system practitioners
with basic knowledge of ML tools and their proper usage, as well as motivating researchers to develop
new models and methods by combining their expertise from both ML and power system fields.
1 INTRODUCTION
The recent developments in monitoring, sensor networks, and advanced meter-
ing infrastructure dramatically increase the variety, volume, and velocity of measurement data in electricity transmission and distribution networks. For
a concrete example, the advent of phasor measurement unit (PMU) has granted
researchers and operators the access to high quality system information that would otherwise be unobservable using traditional technologies. The PMUs
provide real-time measurement of three-phase voltage and current magnitude
and phase angle with a high accuracy and a refined time resolution [1]). The GPS time stamped PMU data enables time-synchronized observability of the
system that would otherwise be unavailable with traditional measurement
technologies. Topology detection [2], phase labeling [3], event detection [4], and linear state estimation [5] are among applications of PMU data that are
explored so far. Fig. 1 illustrates the integration of PMU network, machine
learning (ML)-based event detection tools, and traditional power system infrastructures.
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00005-X
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
SCADA
Database
Outlier/event
detection
Distribution
network
Network
control
system
mPMU monitoring system
Fault library
Feedback
Data acquisition
D a
ta p
re p
ro ce
ss in
g O
n lin
e m
o n
ito ri n
g
Labeled, partly labeled
and unlabeled
measurement data
Training
Archiving
O p
e ra
tio n
PMU in transmission µPMU in distribution
FIG. 1
The integration of ML-based event detection tool with PMU monitoring and SCADA system.
78 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
In general, modern power systems feature a combination of networking, system
dynamics, measurement technology, and computational techniques (such as
ML and control), and are tightly integrated with the demand and behavior of their users. It is foreseeable that in the near future, the incorporation of those
intelligent computations, ubiquitously connected usage patterns, and increased
efficiency and reliability demands will shift the traditional concept of power system from a pure physical system to a cyber-physical system (CPS), which
requires fundamentally new modeling, control, monitoring, design, and diag-
nosis approaches to enhance adaptability, autonomy, efficiency, functionality, reliability, safety, and usability.
Meanwhile, the progress in artificial intelligence, advanced statistics, ML, data
base, and data-mining methodologies has transformed many research fields, including computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition,
robot control, etc., in a significant manner [6]. Being considered as a CPS that
incorporates intelligent computation, modern power system can also benefit from the increasing availability of open source platforms and existing tools in
792 Classic Supervised And Unsupervised Learning
ML to transform the area and utilities into data-driven enterprises. This chapter
particularly discusses ML and data-mining algorithms, methods, and techniques that are adaptable for exploratory data analysis, regression, and pattern recogni-
tion in power systems. The objectives are two folds. On the one hand, both clas-
sical and status quo ML paradigms are reviewed and discussed, motivating the proper usage of traditional supervised/unsupervised learning tools and recent
development of semisupervised learning, multitask, multiview learning, sparse
representation, deep learning, etc., for various tasks in power systems. The hope is that the dramatic progress in ML can be fully harnessed to reform the solution
of power system state estimation, load forecasting, event detection, structure
identification, etc. On the other hand, the reverse direction (i.e., the challenges and new problems brought by power system data to ML) is discussed. Similar to
the impact of computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition,
or robot control on the advancement of ML, it is expected that the complexity of the interconnected system, the behavior-related data-generating process, as well
as the unique sensing and measurement techniques in power systems would inspire novel theoretical and methodological results for ML.
2 CLASSIC SUPERVISED AND UNSUPERVISED LEARNING
2.1 Supervised Learning Overview
Traditionally, there have been two fundamentally different paradigms of ML.
The first one is the supervised learning, with the goal of learning a mapping from some input x to output y. Usually the observations (xi, yi), i ¼ 1, …, n are called samples, xi 2 Rd are referred to as features of sample i, and yi 2 Y are called labels or targets. To find the “optimal” mapping f from a function class H, a wide variety of methodologies have been proposed from very differ- ent perspectives. One of the commonly used strategies is to formulate the learn-
ing task, that is, the identification of f, as a “regularized empirical risk minimization” problem [7], shown in the following
min f2H
1
n
Xn i¼1
Lðyi, fðxiÞÞ + λ
2 k fkH ð1Þ
in which the first term measures the “goodness of fit” of the classifier f with
some loss function L, and the second regularization term penalizes some norm of the mapping in the functional space H. The first term is essentially the aver- aged loss (empirical risk) aggregated over the training samples, and the second
term controls the complexity of the f to avoid over-fitting.1 Hence overall, the learning problem can be thought of as a complexity constrained functional
1In some context the regularization can also help alleviate ill-posed problem and induce sparsity.
80 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
fitting. Note that although some ML formulations do not have the regulariza-
tion, such as the classic linear regression or simple neural network, the inclu-
sion of the term for complexity control is crucial to improve the performance of a learning algorithm [8]. This is known as the Occam’s razor principle, which
favors simpler models (i.e., the learned mapping f) for generalization (testing on unseen data) purposes. By tuning the “hyperparameter” c, which is also
called “model selection” in the jargon of ML, one is able to balance training
fitness and model complexity, hence finding the optimal classifier that gener- alizes well to unseen dataset. The issue of model selection in ML is an important
one, and will be discussed later.
2.1.1 Examples of Supervised Learning as a Regularization Empirical Risk Minimization Depending on different choices of the function class H, the loss function L, and the norm k � kH, different learning problems can be formulated accordingly to accomplish various tasks. Following are some examples of well-known ML par-
adigms that fit in this category.
Linear/Ridge Regression Perhaps the simplest realization of the general formulation (1) is to assume a linear function space, that is,
H ¼ fðxÞ ¼ wTxjw 2 Rd � �
ð2Þ
a squared lose function L ¼ (�)2 together with a squared L2 norm regularization on Rd. Then the empirical risk minimization reads
min w
1
n
Xn i¼1
yi �wTxi � �2
+ λ
2 k wk2 ð3Þ
This realization gives rise to the learning problem of ridge regression, and with λ ¼ 0 it reduces to the classic linear regression. Since the problem can be written in a more compact matrix form as
min w
k Y �Xwk2 + λn 2 k wk2 ð4Þ
the solution can be obtained explicitly with
w* ¼ XTX + λnIð Þ�1XTY ð5Þ
where X is called the design matrix, each row of which contains a sample xi, and
Y is the vector of the target variable. By working with a simplified case with
orthogonal features, one can derive that the regularization term essentially “shrinks” the value of w,2 thus controls the complexity of the linear model
2For general cases with nonorthogonal features one can perform the singular value decomposition (SVD)
first to analyze the shrinkage effect.
812 Classic Supervised And Unsupervised Learning
by favoring “light” coefficients. Yet another popular choice of the regularization
is the L1 norm, which leads to the well-known LASSO learning formulation. An
advantage using the modified regularization is that the solution w can shrink directly to zero, hence achieving sparsity or feature selection (FS) in the process
of modeling learning. This will be revisited in the FS part. Note that the previous derivation is only one perspective for linear/ridge regression. Commonly lin-
ear/ridge regressions are proposed within a Bayesian framework for statistical
analysis, as will be seen shortly.
Logistic Regression To cope with classification problems in which the target variable is categorical
(e.g., y 2{0, 1}), logistic regression again assumes a linear functional space. How- ever, it uses the following transformation to model the conditional probability:
Pðy ¼ 1jxÞ ¼ 1 1 + e�wT x
ð6Þ
In the binary case the probability P(y ¼ 0jx) is simply one minus the term earlier,
Pðy ¼ 1jxÞ ¼ 1� 1 1 + e�wT x
¼ e �wTx
1 + e�wT x ð7Þ
Using the negative of the log likelihood (or cross entropy) as the loss function,
the empirical risk minimization problem reads
min w
�1 n
Xn i¼1
log PðyijxiÞð Þ + λ
2 kwk2 ) 1
n
Xn i¼1
�yiwTxi + log 1 + e�w Txi
� �h i + λ
2 kwk2 ð8Þ
which brings about the L2 regularized logistic regression. Unlike linear/ridge regression, the previous optimization problem does not allow an explicit solu-
tion, but it is still convex and is usually solved by second-order numerical opti-
mization methods such as the Newton-Raphson algorithm.
Support Vector Machine In the original proposition of support vector machine (SVM), the classifier was
constructed with considerations of “large margin separation” [9]. Although that construction is intuitively satisfactory and mathematically inspirational, the
SVM learning method can also be understood within the regularized empirical
risk minimization framework. To begin with, the classifier is still assumed to be a linear function of features and L2 regularization is adopted, but a hinge loss is
used to penalize the misclassification errors, that is,
Lhinge ¼ 1�yiwTxi½ �+ ð9Þ
where
½t�+ ¼ 0 if t � 0 t if t > 0
� ð10Þ
82 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
Intuitively, the loss is zero if the fitted label is correct (i.e., yiw Txi � 1), oth-
erwise the loss is positive and becomes larger if the fitting is away from the
true value (i.e., yiw T xi ≪ 1). With those terms the overall learning task can
be written as
min w
1
n
Xn i¼1
1�yiwTxi
+ + λ
2 kwk2 ð11Þ
An important property of SVM is that it allows the usage of the so-called “kernel trick” to perform classification in a nonlinear functional space. More specifi-
cally, the Lagrangian dual of the optimization (11) reads,
min α
1
2 αTQα�1Tα
s:t: 0 � αi � 1
λn 8i 2 f1,…,ng
ð12Þ
The matrix involved can be expressed in the following
Q ¼ XXT∘YYT
where X is still the design matrix containing all feature samples, and Y the target
(column) vector. The symbol ∘ is used for component-wise multiplication of the two n � n matrices. Due to strong duality, solving the primal SVM problem in Eq. (11) is equivalent to solving its dual form (12). However, a crucial property
of the dual is that it only involves the inner product of feature samples. In partic-
ular, the (i, j)th entry of the matrix XXT is simply xTi xj. If a nonlinear feature trans- formation x ! ϕðxÞ is applied to all samples, then the inner product becomes hϕðxiÞ,ϕðxjÞi≜kðxi, xjÞ ð13Þ
which avoids the explicit calculation of the feature transformation through a kernel function. Commonly used kernel functions are Mercer’s kernels [10]
such as the RBF Gaussian kernel, polynomial kernel, which ensure that the
matrix Q is positive semidefinite. In that case the dual problem is a convex qua- dratic programming.
Nonparametric Regression The so-called nonparametric method covers a class of learning paradigms in
which the number of model parameters grows as the amount of training data
increases. One classic example of the nonparametric method is the simple k-nearest neighbor algorithm for classification or regression. It is demonstrated
here that the nonparametric regression method, namely the natural spline
method, can be derived under the regularized empirical minimization framework.
832 Classic Supervised And Unsupervised Learning
In the context of nonparametric regression, the function space is taken to be all
functions f that have continuous second-order derivatives, i.e., f 00 exists and is continuous. Consider minimizing the penalized residual sum of squares:
min f2Lð2Þ
yi �fðxiÞð Þ2 + λ
2
Z ½f 00ðtÞ�2dt ð14Þ
Intuitively the regularization term imposes the smoothness of the function,
hence favors “simple” solutions. Remarkably, one can show that the problem
(14) admits an explicit, unique, and finite dimensional solution in the form of natural cubic splines [11]. Hence, the regressor can be written as
fðxÞ ¼ Xn i¼1
wiSiðxÞ ð15Þ
where Si(x) are basis functions for the family of n-dimensional natural splines.
It is also seen that the number of model parameters wi increases with the amount of the training data.
Decision Tree Yet another example is the decision tree method. Consider the following func-
tional class:
fðxÞ ¼ XM m¼1
cmIðx 2 RmÞ ð16Þ
If the criterion of empirical risk minimization is adopted as the sum of squared loss (yi�f(xi))2, and a greedy heuristic is applied on rectangle regions Rm, then the learning process reduces to a decision tree for regression. Note that the com-
plexity of the model can be directly controlled by specifying the maximal depth of the search tree in the algorithm.
2.1.2 Bayesian Perspectives Certainly, the viewpoint of regularized empirical risk minimization is not (and
should not be) the only perspective to understand and derive supervised ML paradigms. In effect, traditional ML literature or text books usually proceed
from a probabilistic perspective that tries to describe the data generation pro-
cess and to learn the parameters of that process for future inference purposes. In contrast to the previous section that considers various learning tasks as a fre-
quentist function fitting problem, this perspective is focused on data modeling
and is oftentimes called the Bayesian framework. A comprehensive survey of the Bayesian ML deserves an entire book and is beyond the scope of this chap-
ter. Here two examples are given to equip the readers with some basic concepts.
84 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
Linear/Ridge Regression Revisited Instead of directly minimize the empirical risk, it is assumed that the training
samples {xi, yi} are generated with the following process
yi ¼ wTxi + ei 8i ð17Þ
where the noise ei are drawn independently from a Normal distribution N ð0,σ2Þ. Then the complete likelihood under the above probabilistic assump- tion is
JðwÞ ¼ Yn i¼1
1ffiffiffiffiffiffi 2π
p σ exp �½yi �w
Txi�2 2σ2
( ) ð18Þ
The model estimation can be done via likelihood maximization, which, after
taking negative log and ignore constant terms, yields the minimization ofPn i¼1 yi �wTxið Þ
2 . Hence the classic linear regression is derived. Note that
the solution is usually called the OLS estimator, and based on the probabi-
listic models one can derive diverse statistical properties of the estimator, such as the Gaussian-Markov theorem, hypothesis testing for model param-
eters, variance estimation, etc. Now consider incorporating a “prior
knowledge” about the model parameter w by assuming that it is centered around a zeros vector and each dimension follows a normal distribution
N ð0,τ2Þ. Maximizing the posterior likelihood, one arrives at the following optimization problem:
max w
Yn i¼1
1ffiffiffiffiffiffi 2π
p σ exp �½yi �w
Txi�2 2σ2
( ) 1ffiffiffiffiffiffi 2π
p τd
exp �k wk 2
2τ2
� � ð19Þ
which is equivalent to
min w
Xn i¼1
yi �wTxi � �2
+ σ2
τ2 k wk2 ð20Þ
So far the learning formulation of ridge regression is rediscovered. Under the Bayesian framework, many ML problems can be solved with two steps: (1)
modeling the data-generating process and (2) likelihood maximizing or K � L divergence minimization. In the following, a more comprehensive example is provided to give the readers a flavor about how to develop new ML paradigms
under this framework.
Example: HMM With Autoregressive Emissions This is a variant of the classic Hidden Markov Model (HMM) that incorporates observation auto-correlations. Readers who are not familiar with HMM and
the expectation-maximization algorithm are referred to Chapter 14 of [12]
852 Classic Supervised And Unsupervised Learning
for background knowledge, or they can simply ignore this part and save it
for future reading. To start with, consider an HMM where (q1, q2, …, qT) is the state sequence and where (y1, y2, …, yT) is the observation sequence.
The following modifications are made to include the observation auto-
correlations:
• Instead of letting yt depend solely on qt as in a standard HMM, we let yt also depend on yt�1.
• In particular, let each yt be a univariate Gaussian random variable, and
distributed as Nðμqt + βyt�1,σ2Þ.
With such data-generating process, the learning problem is reduced to estimat-
ing the transitional matrix, denoted by Ak, l, and the parameters μk and β of the Gaussian distribution. The graphical model of the above generating process is
illustrated in Fig. 2. Now that the model has been established, the likelihood of
the training data is maximized with the EM algorithm, which in a sense can be regarded as an alternating optimization procedure. More specifically, the fol-
lowing steps are conducted:
Step 1: Write out the complete log-likelihood. Let θ ¼ (π, A, μ, β, σ2)
FIG. 2
Graphical mod
log pðY,qjθÞ ¼ log Ym l¼1
πq1 YT t¼2
Aqt�1,qt YT t¼1
Nðμqt + βyt�1,σ2Þ ( )
¼ Xm l¼1
Iðq1 ¼ lÞlogπl + XT t¼2
Xm k¼1
Xm l¼1
Iðqt�1 ¼ k,qt ¼ lÞlogAk,l
� 1 2σ2
XT t¼1
Xm l¼1
Iðqt ¼ lÞðyt �ul �βyt�1Þ2 � T
2 logð2πσ2Þ
qt qt+1
yt+1yt
q1
y1
el for hidden Markov model with autoregressive emissions.
Each ter
αðqt + 1Þ
βðqtÞ
ξðqt,qt + 1Þ
86 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
Find objective function by taken expectation conditioning on Y, θold.
Step 2:
EqjY,θold½logpðY,qjθÞ� ¼ Xm l¼1
pðq1 ¼ ljY,θoldÞlogπl
+ XT t¼2
Xm k¼1
Xm l¼1
pðqt�1 ¼ k,qt ¼ ljY,θoldÞlogAk,l
� 1 2σ2
XT t¼1
Xm l¼1
pðqt ¼ ljY,θoldÞðyt �ul �βyt�1Þ2
�T 2 logð2πσ2Þ
This gives rise to the EM algorithm for learning the HMM with auto-
regressive emissions.
E-step: Compute conditional expectations (conditional probabilities) based on observation and current estimation of parameter.
pðqt ¼ ljY,θoldÞ ¼ αðqtÞβðqtÞ
pðYÞ ≜γðqtÞpðqt�1 ¼ k,qt ¼ ljY,θ oldÞ ¼ ξðqt,qt + 1Þ
ms can be updated recursively with the following formula:
¼ pðy1,…,yt + 1,qt + 1Þ ¼ X qt
pðy1,…,yt + 1,qt,qt + 1Þ
¼ X qt
pðy1,…,yt�1jqt,qt + 1,yt,yt + 1Þpðqt,qt + 1,yt,yt + 1Þ
¼ X qt
pðy1,…,yt�1jqt,ytÞpðyt + 1jyt,qt + 1Þpðqt + 1jqtÞpðyt,qtÞ
¼ X qt
αðqtÞAqt + 1,qt pðyt + 1jyt,qt + 1Þ
¼ X qt + 1
pðyt + 1,…,yT,qt + 1jqt,ytÞ
¼ X qt + 1
pðyt + 2,…,yTjqt,yt,qt + 1,yt + 1Þpðqt + 1,yt + 1jqt,ytÞ
¼ X qt + 1
pðyt + 2,…,yTjqt + 1,yt + 1Þpðyt + 1jyt,qt + 1Þpðqt + 1jqtÞ
¼ X qt + 1
βðqt + 1ÞAqt + 1,qt pðyt + 1jyt,qt + 1Þ
≜pðqt,qt + 1jYÞ ¼ pðy1,…,yt�1jqt,ytÞpðyt + 1,…,yT,qt + 1jqt,ytÞpðqt,ytÞ
pðYÞ ¼ αðqtÞpðyt + 2,…,yTjqt + 1,yt + 1Þpðyt + 1jyt,qt + 1Þpðqt + 1jqtÞ
pðYÞ ¼ αðqtÞβðqt + 1ÞAqt + 1,qt pðyt + 1jyt,qt + 1Þ
pðYÞ
π̂ l ¼ γl1
Âkl ¼
XT t¼2X t¼
σ̂2 ¼ 1 T
XT t¼
μ̂l ¼
XT t¼1
β̂ ¼
XT t¼1
X l
872 Classic Supervised And Unsupervised Learning
Based on current expectation of hidden variable, maximize
M-step:
EqjY,θold½logpðY,qjθÞ� by make the gradient vanish. The following updating formula can be obtained:
T
γ
m
¼
ξklt�1,t
2
γkt
1
Xm l¼1
γltðyt � μ̂l�β̂yt�1Þ2
l tðyt � β̂yt�1Þ
XT t¼1
γlt
1
γltðyt � μ̂lÞyt�1 XT t¼1
y2t�1
e update only involves sufficient statistics, and at this step the sub-
Note that th problem is concave because complete distribution is in exponential family.
2.2 Unsupervised Learning Overview
The second task of ML is the unsupervised learning [13]. Under this setting,
only the unlabeled observations X ¼ {x1, …, xn} are given. Typically, the goal of unsupervised learning is to identify interesting structures in the data X, such as clusters, quantiles, support, low-dimensional embedding, or more generally
the patterns related with the distribution of the data. Note again that this part is
not a comprehensive survey of existing unsupervised learning method, but rather to provide readers with the intuition and the linear algebra or optimiza-
tion techniques behind those ML tools. In particularly, this part discusses two
popular unsupervised ML tasks.
Principle Component Analysis Given a data set with large number of features, such as the PMU measurement from power networks, it is often desirable or even necessary to find a low-
dimensional representation of the data. Dimension reduction (or manifold
learning) is one of the most important problems in unsupervised learning. The argument is that many high-dimensional data sets are in effect noisy
versions of a low-dimensional embedding. Hence by finding their
88 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
low-dimensional structure, one is able to achieve efficient information repre-
sentation, computation, denoising, feature extraction, as well as for visualiza- tion purposes.
Ideally, the transformed data in the reduced space should maintain key pro- perties of the original data set. This implies some loss functions to minimize.
Let X 2 Rn�d be a centered data (design) matrix (i.e., each row contains a data sample, and each column is centered to have zero mean). The classic princi- ple component analysis (PCA) aims at finding a linear subspace of the
d-dimensional data, such that the reconstruction error is minimized. More
formally, let the rank of the subspace be k, then PCA essentially solves
min P2Pk
k X �XP k2F ð21Þ
where Pk is a d � d orthogonal projection matrix with rank k, and k � kF is the Frobenius norm of a matrix. The optimization problem shown previously seems intractable at first glance; however, one can show that its solution is sim-
ply the projection of each data sample onto the top k singular vectors of the
empirical covariance matrix. In effect, we have
k X �XP k2F ¼ Tr ðX �XPÞðX �XPÞT h i
¼ �Tr XPXT½ � + Tr XXT½ �
Hence minimizing the reconstruction error is equivalent to maximize Tr XPXT½ �. Since P is an orthogonal projection matrix of rank k, it can be written as P ¼ UUT for some U 2 Rd�k. Then using the cyclic permutation property of the trace oper- ator, one arrives at
Tr XPXT½ � ¼ UTXTXU ¼ Xk j¼1
uTj X TXuj
Given the previous equivalence, it is clear that the top k singular vectors of X maximize the final objective. Hence PCA is closely related with the SVD and
is usually computed by perform exact or approximate SVD on the data matrix.
Moreover, PCA is also amendable for the usage of “kernel trick,” since it only involves the inner products. Please refer to [14] for an application of kernel PCA
for abnormal event detection in power systems.
k-Means Clustering Another popular unsupervised learning task is the clustering, which tries to
group a collection of data samples into several subsets or clusters. Ideally, the sample points within the same cluster are “close” or “similar” to each other,
while samples in different groups or clusters are different. Hence, clustering is
also called data segmentation and is closely related with the NP-hard set
892 Classic Supervised And Unsupervised Learning
partition problem. From the objective, one immediate realizes that the defini-
tion of closeness and similarity is the key for the success of any clustering algo- rithms. In practice, the naive choice of the similarity metric (e.g., common
distance metrics, such as L2, Hamming distance, etc.) may not produce mean-
ingful clustering. Hence, it is advisable to select the distance/similarity measure with expert knowledge or using metric learning algorithms.
The following provide a brief review of the classic k-mean algorithm again from an optimization viewpoint. Consider the cost function
Jðz,μÞ ¼ Xn i¼1
XK j¼1
z j i k xi �μjk2
where xi and μj are vectors in R d and each vector zi ¼ ðz1i ,…,zKi Þ is constrained to
have one component equal to 1 and the others 0.
• When the cluster centers μ1, …, μk are fixed, minimizing the objective w.r.t z decomposes as minimizing each z
j i separately, that is, for each i
z j i ¼ argminJðz,μÞ ¼ argmin
z j i 2f0,1g;
X j z j i ¼1
XK k¼1
z j i k xi �μkk2
( ) ¼ 1 j ¼ arg min
k k xi �μk k
�
as the minimum is achieved simply by assigning z j i ¼ 1 to the minimum
value of kxi � μkk. • When the group indicators zi’s are fixed, minimizing the objective
w.r.t μ also decomposes as minimizing each μj independently (i.e., for each j 2{1, …, K}),
μj ¼ argminJðz,μÞ ¼ argminc Xn i¼1
z j i k xi �ck2
( )
which is a quadratic form of the vector c, taking derivative and setting it to zero we get
μj ¼
X i
z j ixiX
i
z j i
In both of the previous two steps, one set of decision variables is fixed and the
overall objective is decreased by minimizing w.r.t another set of variables.
Hence, the k-means algorithm is indeed a special case of coordinate descent with z, μ as coordinates, or alternating optimization in general. Its convergence is guaranteed as a bounded objective is decreased in each iteration; however,
90 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
the problem is not convex and it does not necessarily converge to the global
minimum. Some efforts have been made to alleviate this issue, such as the well-known k-means++ which systematically find good initial points. Other
clustering techniques include spectral clustering, hierarchical clustering, self-
organized map, etc. Although the readers are encourage to try out exiting packages for those algorithms, it is always helpful to keep in mind that a proper
definition of distance/similarity is the key to the success of those unsupervised
ML methods.
3 MODEL SELECTION (HYPERPARAMETER SELECTION)
ML algorithms for regression, pattern recognition, or classification depend on multiple hyperparameters. In the earlier example concerning soft margin SVMs,
the parameter C allows the tuning of the margin error penalty, which implicitly determines the number of support vectors or the complexity of the model. The
kernel function and its corresponding hyperparameter maps the original fea-
ture space to a high-dimensional Hilbert space. In the decision tree example the maximal depth of the tree directly determines the complexity of the splitting
process. It has also been seen that the penalty parameter λ of ridge regression reflects our prior knowledge of the model and has an effect to “shrink” the learned model coefficients. Given available training data set Dt and an ML
model characterized by a set of hyperparameters θ,3 the model selection essen- tially tries to solve:
θ* ¼ argminθDt,Du Ψ f̂ ðDt,θÞ,Du � �
ð22Þ
where f̂ ðDt,θÞ is the learned ML model with the training data Dt and hyperpara- meter θ. Du denotes some unseen data set, and Ψ is certain loss function that evaluates the goodness of the ML model on that testing data. Since the true dis-
tribution of the training and testing data is unknown, the expectation has to be approximated with an estimation, yielding the following problem:
θ* ¼ argminθΨ̂ f̂ ðDt,θÞ,Du � �
ð23Þ
In general, the tuning of ML models through those hyperparameters can greatly
impact the complexity, flexibility, cost sensitiveness, noise-resilience, and many
other performance metrics of the ML method. An optimal classifier f ∗ 2 H
resulted from the optimal set of hyperparameters is then expected to minimize
the generalization cost on some unseen data, and the process of selecting those
3Note the difference between model hyperparameters and model parameters, which is denoted by
w throughout this chapter. w reflects the way we model the data and is determined by the training process
(e.g., empirical risk minimization), while the hyperparameters θ are introduced and selected by the users.
913 Model Selection (Hyperparameter Selection)
hyperparameters is called model (or hyperparameter) selection. This section is
devoted to the discussion of commonly used techniques for model selection. Some theoretical foundations about generalization bound in the probably
approximately correct (PAC) learning framework are first introduced, then var-
ious model selection strategies are presented for practitioners.
3.1 Theoretical Intuition
Generalization Bound A natural question arises when an ML model, say f, is learned from data, that is, “How will f perform (in terms of mean squared error, classification error, etc.)
on unseen data in the future?” This question cannot be answered in general
without further assumptions, because the source of the future unseen data could be arbitrary even adversary. However, this question can be answered when some
mild conditions are imposed on the true data generating process/model. In the
terminology of ML, the previous question is addressed with generalization per- formance (also known as the out-of-sample performance) analysis. One popular
way to conduct such analysis is through a framework called PAC learning, which
stands for PAC learning. Within the PAC learning framework, a concept class4
is PAC learnable if there exists a tractable learning algorithm A such that for any
c 2 C, any distribution D and some E > 0, δ > 0, PrD�D err fðDÞ½ � � Ef g � 1�δ ð24Þ
Although no assumptions are made for D, the learning framework do require that both training and testing data are from the same distribution. It is called
“probably” as the error is controlled in a probabilistic sense with confidence
1 � δ, and the name “approximately” is used to emphasize that a soft control of the accuracy, 1 � E, is adopted. Despite of being abstract and largely math- ematical, the PAC learning analysis is able to reveal the generalization perfor-
mance of a learning method as a function of model complexity, training sample size, etc., and is quite helpful for model selection purposes. As an example, in
the case of binary classification with i.i.d. (independent identically distributed)
samples, one can show that [8] with probability at least 1 � δ,
Prðy 6¼ fðxÞÞ|fflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl} testing error
� P̂rn y 6¼ fðxÞð Þ|fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl} training error
+ 1
2 RnðFÞ|fflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflffl}
model complexity
+
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi lnð1=δÞ
2n
r |fflfflfflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflfflfflffl} vanishing term
ð25Þ
It can be seen that the LHS, the testing error, is controlled by the three terms in the RHS, which are (1) the empirical error on the training data set, (2) the
4Roughly speaking, the notion “concept class” C is an abstraction of the target function one would like to
learn from data.
92 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
model complexity measured by the Rademacher complexity of the function
class F, and (3) a term that vanishes as the training sample size n increases.
The above generalization bound reveals an important trade-off: A complex model will induce smaller training error in the first term; however, it will also
increase the value of the second term. Therefore, to find the optimal model f 2 F, one has to balance the fitness on training data and the complexity of the ML model. As a side note for the second term, many other complexity mea-
sures, such as VC-dimension, metric entropy, can be used for similar analysis. Interested readers are referred to the first few chapters of [15] for details. More-
over, the complexity term often can be expressed explicitly as a function of
hyperparameters for particular ML models, such as the kernel SVM and its var- iants [16]. This property can be exploited to perform model selection in practice
to avoid over fitting.
Bias-Variance Trade-Off Yet another way to reveal the effect of model complexity on generalization per- formance is through a simple bias-variance analysis. For example, in a regres-
sion setting let us assume that y ¼ f(x) + ε where E(ε) ¼ and V ar(ε) ¼ σ2, then the expected prediction squared error for any new input x0 can be written as:
Lðx0Þ ¼ E ðy � f̂ ðx0ÞÞ2jx0 h i
¼ σ2|{z} irreducible error
+ E½ f̂ ðx0Þ��fðx0Þ � �2 |fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl}
biase2
+ E f̂ ðx0Þ�E½f̂ ðx0Þ� h i2
|fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl} variance
Typically, complex models f fit the data well and incur a small bias, while the
induced variance is high. On the contrary simple models produce high bias but low variance. Hence, the fitness and complexity trade-off is revealed again. To
illustrate the above points, Fig. 3 demonstrates the training, validation (which
will be discussed later), and testing error as a function of model complexity. One observes that as model complexity increase, the training error decreases
constantly, while the testing error first decreases and then increases due to
over-fitting. Hence, model selection tries to estimate testing error via validation error and choose the “best” model (the circle point in the figure) for future use.
3.2 Practical Model Selection Techniques Cross-Validation In practice, the most well-known technique for hyperparameters selection is the cross-validation (CV), in which classifiers induced by different sets of parame-
ters are applied to a validation sets. The parameters that minimize the average
validation cost are then selected for future use. CV is particularly useful if we are in a data-rich situation: the available data at hand is randomly divided into two
parts: a training set and a validation set. Here the testing set is assumed to be
0 5 10 15 Model complexity
100
101
102
103
104
M e a n
s q
u a re
d e
rr o
r (
M S
E )
Training/validation/testing performace vs. model complexity
Train Validation Test Best
Low biase; high varianceLow variance; high biase
FIG. 3
The effect of model complexity on training, validation, and testing performance.
933 Model Selection (Hyperparameter Selection)
unavailable, but in practice to evaluate the final ML model one can simply
“hold out” a subset of the data by not including it in the model selection pro- cess. The training set is used to train the models, and the validation set is used to
estimate generalization cost for model selection, that is, in problem (23) the
estimator Ψ̂ is taken to be the cost on the validation data set. With that, a search is conducted in the hyperparameter space for different combinations of θ, and the one inducing minimal validation cost is chosen. Finally, the model obtained from the optimal hyperparameters is used on the unseen (or the held
out) testing set for assessment.
Two problems arises. The first one is how to split the available data. Although the answer depends largely on the size, signal-to-noise ratio, dimensionality, etc., of
the data at hand, in practice one can simply adopt the K-folds CV strategy, shown
in Fig. 4. Note that when K is small, the estimation of the generalization cost has low variance but high bias, while as K increases the estimation incurs low bias but
high variance, and is computationally more costly.5 The second problem is about
how to search within the hyperparameter space. This is essentially an optimiza- tion problem, although the function/objective to be optimized is random
and hardly bears any nice properties (e.g., convexity, smoothness, differen-
tiability) for optimization purposes. For low-dimensional θ, an exhaustive search
5Although for some ML models, such as linear/ridge regression, the leave-one-out CV (n � 1)-folds CV can be calculated explicitly.
Training data set
Validation data set
Testing data set
FIG. 4
Illustration of K-folds CV.
94 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
(or coarse to fine grid search) can be performed; however, when the number of hyperparameters is large, a resort to more advanced techniques, such as the
parametric gradient [17], or black-box function optimization, is necessary.
Being a Bayesian In the Bayesian perspective, the model selection problem can be formulated as picking the model largest marginal likelihood, that is,
M∗θ ¼ argmaxmPrðDjmθÞ ð26Þ
Together with additional assumptions on the prior distribution of the hyper-
parameters, and techniques such as Gaussian approximation, the above max- imization problem can either be solved with various sampling methods, or lead
to some simple criterion for model selection. Among others, one such example
is the Bayesian information criterion. Interested readers are referred to Chapter 11 of [12] for more discussion.
Regularization Path Algorithms It is worth pointing out that the model selection problem for certain popular
ML methods, such as LASSO or SVM, has been extensively studied in literature,
which yields both theoretical guarantees and algorithmic methods. In particu- lar, the so-called regularization path algorithm tries to characterize the learned
model as a function of hyperparameters. In this way, the computational cost of
CV can be greatly reduced. For instance, it can be shown that the solution α* of the SVM dual Eq. (12) is a piece-wise linear function of 1/λ, and an explicit form of the dependence can be derived at each intervals [17].
Bayesian Optimization For complex nonprobabilistic ML models having large number of hyperpara- meters, such a deep neural network, all of the above methods may not be appli-
cable. CV with an exhaustive search over the hyperparameter space is
954 Feature Selection
intractable, as the number of training-validations scales exponentially to the
number of hyperparameters. Also, it seems unlikely that one can derive a sim- ple regularization path for such complicated models. To cope with this prob-
lem, recently the ML community has been treating the model selection problem
as a black-box optimization problem with a computational constraint. The input of the objective function is the settings of hyperparameters, and the out-
put is an estimation of the generalization performance, such as the testing error
in the CV framework. The optimization is then solved by leveraging the advancements of black-box optimization theory and algorithms. One optimi-
zation technique that demonstrates remarkable success is the Bayesian optimi-
zation, which builds Gaussian process models based on observed function value, and decides the next point to evaluation by balance the exploration-
exploitation trade-off. Readers are referred to [18, 19] for theoretical details
and examples.
4 FEATURE SELECTION
4.1 Overview
Identifying the most informative patterns or features from the observed data (i.e., FS) is one of the underpinnings for the success of any data analytic
methods. Especially with the recent advancement in instrumentation and mea-
surement technologies, power system researchers now have access to rich and real-time system, loads, and user data. Often, the raw datasets present them-
selves in very different forms, such as multiple coevolving time series, indepen-
dent records, survey, etc., and need to be preprocessed to extract tentative patterns/features for pattern recognition or predictive applications. Among
the vast quantity of information generated by such process, some features
are correlated with the target application while others may be less relevant or redundant. For most ML methods, incorporating irrelevant or redundant
patterns as input will not help but instead will deteriorate their performance.
As such, the goal of FS is to identify the most informative feature set from the observed data. The overall information processing procedure for the input
of ML is called feature engineering in the jargon of data mining. As can be seen
from the earlier, feature engineering actually involves two steps, that is, (1) fea- ture extraction and (2) FS. Because feature extraction is application specific and
requires domain knowledge such as physics, networking, and signal processing,
this section will only provide an example in power system event detection. The mainly focus, on the other hand, will be techniques for FS (Fig. 5).
In the literature, FS methods are classified into three categories, filter method, wrapper method, and embedded method. A more comprehensive survey can be
found in [20].
7500 Raw measurement streams Pattern/feature streams
Window step
7450 7400
400 200
0 80 75 70
400 200
0 80 75 70
400 200
0 80 75 70
0 1 2 3
Time step
4 5 6
Pattern feature
extraction
Pattern feature
selection
Data-mining applications
×104
80 75 70 50
0 –50 0.5
0 –0.5
40 20
0 400 200
0 2000 1000
0 2 1 0
40 20
0
500 1000
0 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500
FIG. 5
Raw measurement data preprocessing and FS for data-mining applications.
9 6
C H A P T E R
5 :
M o v in g T o w a r d A g ile
M a c h in e L e a r n in g fo r D a ta
A n a ly tic
s in
P o w e r S y s te
m s
974 Feature Selection
Filter Method This method selects informative features and suppresses the least interesting
ones regardless of the underlying model assumption. Some informativeness metrics (i.e., a score), which indicate the usefulness of a feature subset, are
adopted as the objective for selection purposes. Commonly used metrics
include mutual information, t-statistics, signal-to-noise ratio, Hilbert-Schmidt Independence Criterion (HSIC), etc. Then the selection is done via optimizing
the metric through combinatorial search or greedy approximation. Since the
definition of the metric is not bounded by a particular ML model and is easy to compute from data, Filter method can be used for general and efficient
FS. However, except for a few metrics, most filter methods are heuristics that
lack theoretical justification.
Wrapper Method The wrapper method blends in a learner (e.g., classifier or predictor) with the straightforward goal to minimize the classification or prediction error. In
other words, a candidate feature set is evaluated by training a particular ML
model and the estimated generalization performance (with CV for example) is used as the selection criterion. The selection procedure is usually done in a
stage-wise or greedy manner to avoid combinatorial search. Features selected
by the wrapper method can yield high accuracy for the particular learner but are not always suitable for others. Besides, the wrapper method
becomes computationally intensive when the number of candidate patterns
is large, as the wrapped ML model needs to be trained each time a feature set is evaluated.
Embedded Method This method implicitly selects feature subsets by introducing sparsity in the learning model construction. The core idea, as is briefly introduced in the pre-
vious section, is to incorporate sparsity constraints or penalties in the risk min-
imization. Exemplary models include the LASSO, L1-SVM, etc., which exploit the “truncated shrinkage effect” of the L1 norm. The embedded methods are
still model-specific, and their selection consistency is an issue in both theory
and practice.
Some examples of the earlier FS methods are summarized in Table 1.
4.2 An Practical Example of FS Using Information Theory Criterion
In this section an example is provided to demonstrate both the feature extract and selection steps in the context of power system event detection with μPMU [30]. Fig. 6 shows a snapshot of the μPMU measurement data. Facing
7400
7420
7440
7460
V M
a g n itu
d e
C M
a g n itu
d e
V A
n g le
C A
n g le
0
100
200
300
400
72
74
76
78
80
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Time (ns) ×104
0
100
200
300
400
FIG. 6
Raw μPMU data from a real-world power distribution network.
Table 1 Examples of Various FS Methods and Comparison
Method Type Dependence Optimization Target Scalable?
Centroid [21] Filter Linear Com/Greedy Classification Yes
t-score Filter Linear Com/Greedy Classification Yes
B-statistic [22] Filter Linear Com/Greedy Classification Yes
Correlation Filter Linear Com/Greedy Regression Yes
mRmR [23] Filter Nonlinear Greedy Both Yes
IGFF [24] Filter Nonlinear Greedy Both Yes
LASSO Embedded Linear Convex Both Yes
LDFS [25] Embedded Linear Convex Classification No
FVM [26] Embedded Nonlinear Nonconvex Both No
HSIC [27] Filter Nonlinear Greedy Both Yes
QPFS [28] Filter Nonlinear Nonconvex Both No
SpAM [29] Embedded Nonlinear Convex Both Yes
98 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
994 Feature Selection
milliseconds μPMU data that has not been explored before, limited prior knowledge is available on the effectiveness of different feature extraction methods. To use the data in an effective way, firstly all plausible ways of fea-
ture extraction are conducted, then the minimum-redundancy-maximum-
relevance (mRmR) criterion is used to selected most informative ones for each type of events.
Notation-wise, the multistream time series μPMU data are written as {X1, …, XT}. Each Xt is an M � C-dimensional vector where M is the number of μPMUs and C is the number of channels of each μPMU. Because the raw data are in milli- second’s resolution and almost all practical events happen at a larger time scale, one can safely use a sliding window to extract useful information. The window
size L should be chosen according to the time scale of the event of interest.
For example, in order to detect certain transient event in 0.1s scale, one takes L ¼ 12 and processes the data in each window. For ease of notation let wit≜fxit,…,xit + Lg be the tth window of stream i. Now diverse techniques are considered to construct feature candidates. Intui-
tively, some events, such as voltage sag or voltage disturbance, could be
revealed by investigating single streams (voltage magnitude or phase) fluctua- tions, while other events, such as high impedance fault and voltage oscillation,
might be more obvious by analyzing the interbehavior/dependence of multiple
voltage and current streams. For the purpose of detecting different types of events, both single stream and interstream feature extracts should be included
with a variety of metrics.
Single Stream Features Extraction – Classic statistics: Including mean, variance, and range of voltage/current
magnitude in each window. These features capture the average voltage/ current values as well as their fluctuations in the time slot. The median is also
included as it is a more “robust” metric of average value from a statistical
viewpoint. To further characterize the variations of magnitude in each window, the distributional features, including entropy, and histogram are
calculated.
– First-order difference: We compute xit + 1 �xit for each stream and take the corresponding mean and variance in each window. The intuition is that
some transient events may exhibit significant “jumps” in voltage and current
magnitude, which can be well captured by “spikes” in the first-order difference. As for streams associated with phase information, the average
difference is an indicator of voltage/current frequency and is also an
important indicator of system stability. – Transformation: Notice that many distribution side events, such as
ON/OFF of reactive loads, usually lead to oscillations in both magnitude
100 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
and phase measurement, we propose to use fast Fourier transform (FFT) to
capture this frequency domain information. Also, wavelet transformation
is adopted to capture local fluctuations and abrupt changes.
Interstream Features – Deviation: The difference between any two of the three phases, for both
voltage and current. The resulted time sequences are processed as single
streams in each window with classic statistics. In this way, we incorporate information for the events that exhibit phase imbalance.
– Correlation between any two of the three phases, for both voltage and current. The correlation constitutes a metric of dependence for these time series, and is also helpful in providing information related with interphase
behavior.
A summary of feature extraction candidates are given in Table 2. Note that the
interstream features for different nodes (hence from different μPMUs) should be very interesting for subsystems width event detection, for which one can
include not only correlation as dependence metric, but also causal information
[31] that pinpoints the propagation of the event.
With the presented feature extraction procedure, a total number of 260 features
have been pooled together. Obviously, some of them may be redundant as
there are significant similarities among extracted features, for example, when the three phases are balanced, their single stream mean, variation, etc., are
almost the same. For another instance, the first-order difference and wavelet
transformation of one specific stream might have very similar pattern as they both reflect the sudden change of the same time series. From an ML point of
view, adding redundant features does not help detection/classification, but
instead would introduce extra learning noise and cause computational difficulties.
Table 2 Extracted Features Candidates
Single stream
Statistics meanðwitÞ,varðwitÞ,rangeðwitÞ
medianðwitÞ,entropyðwitÞ,histðwitÞ Difference uit ¼ DiffðxitÞ; statistics
Transformation fftðwitÞ,waveletðwitÞ
Interstream Deviation xi �xj 8i, 8j 2 N ðiÞ Correlation corrðxi, xjÞ 8i, 8j 2 N ðiÞ
1014 Feature Selection
More importantly, for a particular event, or type of events, in practice only sub-
sets of the calculated features are relevant, as it is mentioned earlier when those feature extraction techniques are proposed. After all, it is always beneficial to
find out the “fingerprint” of each types of the event, not only for algorithmic
concern, but also for system diagnosis purposes.
Here mRmR is used for FS. The procedure uses mutual information as the
metric of goodness of a candidate feature set, and resolve the trade-off between relevancy and redundancy. To be specific, let I(X;Y) be the mutual
information between random variable X and Y, the first part of FS objective
is to maximize the average dependence of selected feature set S on the target label c, i.e.
max S2X
DðSÞ≜ 1jSj X xi2S
Iðxi;cÞ ð27Þ
where we have denoted S as the set variable for a collection of features, and
X ¼ fx1, � ,xdg as the set of all candidate features. Considering that features selected only according to Max-Relevance criterion could have rich redun-
dancy, a second objective, a penalty on average first-order redundancy is
introduced
min S2X
RðSÞ≜ 1 jSj2
X xi, xj2S
Iðxi, xjÞ ð28Þ
Combining the earlier two consideration yields the mRmR FS objective
max S2X
fDðSÞ�RðSÞg ð29Þ
which is approximately solved with a greedy heuristic: suppose we already have
Sm�1, the feature set with m � 1 features, then the next feature is found by opti- mizing the following one variable problem:
max xj2XnSm�1
Iðxj;cÞ� 1
m�1 X
xi2Sm�1 Iðxj;xiÞ
" # ð30Þ
For a theoretical analysis of the greedy algorithm, please refer to [32]. The
mRmR implementation is available online for C++, R, and MATLAB, with a multilayer discretization technique for mutual information estimation. For
each event, the selection method can be performed to choose the most infor- mative feature set for event classification or detection. The top four selected fea-
tures for high impedance fault are shown in Fig. 7.
0
0.5
1
w a ve
( C
3 )
0
0.5
1
d iff
( C
1 )
0
0.5
1
ff t (V
2 )
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 0
0.5
1
m e d ia
n (
V 2 )
FIG. 7
Selected features for high impedance fault.
102 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
5 OTHER PROMISING RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
Leverage Unlabeled Data With Semisupervised Learning
The presence of both labeled and unlabeled data motivates the so-called semi- supervised learning [33]. The hope is that, by combining both types of available
data sets, semisupervised learning could find better models and reduce the cost
of expert engagement [34]. In the context of power system applications, data with detailed labels are precious but scant—power system experts are needed
to inspect the measurement and provide insights. On the other hand, partial
information may be obtained less costly by using unsupervised learning methods. Moreover, unlabeled data can be acquired in large quantity simply
by collecting sensor measurement. Therefore, one possible (and may be neces-
sary) direction for big data analytic in power systems is the development of spe- cialized semisupervised learning methods for various tasks like prediction, state
estimation, load forecast, event detection, fault localization, etc. Some recent
work (e.g., [30]) has shown promising results in this direction.
Knowledge Transfer With Multitask Learning
The learning tasks in power system applications are often related with each other. For a simple example, the load forecast problem at one particular node
of the distribution network bears much similarity to the forecast problems at
1035 Other Promising Research Directions
other locations. This is because they are all driven by similar user behavior,
weather condition, etc. Recent development of multitask learning [35–37] and transfer learning [38] allows the sharing of information and knowledge
from one or several learning tasks to related tasks. The advantages are many
folds. For instance, it might be the case that the training data for some learning task are not sufficient, and by information sharing among similar tasks it has an
effect to “increase the training data size.” In addition, recent multitask learning
tools are able to automatically identify the dependence structure among tasks. This provides interesting “structure” information for different processes that are
coevolving in power systems. Last but not least, the multitask learning setup can
help the learning of “system or network level” events that would otherwise be unobservable with single-task learning methods. See Chapter 3 of [39] for an
example that builds multitask time series model for distribution network event
detection.
Information Fusion With Multiview Learning
The problem of combining information from different sources has been
addressed by diverse control and system engineering literature, usually under the framework of Kalman filtering or its variants like particle filtering. From
an ML perspective, those fusion methods amount to assuming a model with
additive noise and then including side information using Bayes’ rule. Yet another growing subarea of ML, namely multiview learning, is able to explore
the consistency and complementary properties of different information sources
or feature sets, and produce more effective and more promising models with better generalization ability than traditional single-view learning models
[40–42]. The techniques used for multiview learning include cotraining, mul- tiple kernel learning, and subspace learning, and all of them have well- established theoretical guarantees and algorithmic implementations. For
power system applications, multiview learning seems promising to combine
time domain system dynamics, spectral analysis, topological information, as well as external covariates such as weather, transportation, user mobility,
etc., in an unified ML framework for a more general and automatic information
fusion.
Other Promising Directions
Among many others, the following advancements in ML can be exploited for
power system applications:
• Deep learning for end-to-end classification/regression and automatic
information representation (see Chapter 7). • Compress sensing for load/resource prediction and system structure
mining (see Chapter 8).
104 CHAPTER 5: Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
• Manifold learning and interaction learning to model high-dimensional
power system state.
• Tensor analysis and modeling for the data generated from multichannel sensors equipped in smart grid.
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- Moving Toward Agile Machine Learning for Data Analytics in Power Systems
- Introduction
- Classic Supervised and Unsupervised Learning
- Supervised Learning Overview
- Examples of Supervised Learning as a Regularization Empirical Risk Minimization
- Linear/Ridge Regression
- Logistic Regression
- Support Vector Machine
- Nonparametric Regression
- Decision Tree
- Bayesian Perspectives
- Linear/Ridge Regression Revisited
- Example: HMM With Autoregressive Emissions
- Unsupervised Learning Overview
- Principle Component Analysis
- k-Means Clustering
- Model Selection (Hyperparameter Selection)
- Theoretical Intuition
- Generalization Bound
- Bias-Variance Trade-Off
- Practical Model Selection Techniques
- Cross-Validation
- Being a Bayesian
- Regularization Path Algorithms
- Bayesian Optimization
- Feature Selection
- Overview
- Filter Method
- Wrapper Method
- Embedded Method
- An Practical Example of FS Using Information Theory Criterion
- Single Stream Features Extraction
- Interstream Features
- Other Promising Research Directions
- Leverage Unlabeled Data With Semisupervised Learning
- Knowledge Transfer With Multitask Learning
- Information Fusion With Multiview Learning
- Other Promising Directions
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-6---Unsupervised-Learning-Methods-for-P_2018_Big-Data-Application-in.pdf
CHAPTER 6
Unsupervised Learning Methods for Power System Data Analysis
Thierry Zufferey*, Andreas Ulbig*,†, Stephan Koch*,†, Gabriela Hug* *ETH Zurich, Power Systems Laboratory, Zurich, Switzerland, †Adaptricity AG, c/o ETH Zurich,
Power Systems Laboratory, Zurich, Switzerland
ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the use of the K-Means clustering algorithm for an enhanced visibility of the
electrical distribution system which can be provided by advanced metering infrastructure and sup- ported by big data technologies and parallel cloud computing environments such as Spark and
H2O. Based on smart meter data of more than 30,000 loads in the City of Basel, Switzerland,
and thanks to an appropriate cluster analysis, it is shown that useful knowledge of the grid state can be gained without any further information concerning the type of consumer and their habits.
Once energy data is judiciously prepared, the features extraction is an important step. A graphical
user interface is presented which illustrates the potentially great flexibility in the choice of features
according to the needs of distribution system operators (DSOs). For example, the distribution of the various types of customers across the power system is of interest to DSOs. This chapter presents thus
some pertinent examples of clustering outcomes that are visualized on the map of Basel, which
notably enables to easily identify heating and cooling demand or gain insight into the energy con-
sumption throughout the day for different neighborhoods.
107
1 INTRODUCTION
For the last few years, we have observed a rapid rollout of new sensor
elements, e.g., smart meters, in the electrical distribution grid. This enables
accurate high-resolution measurements on both the spatial scale (on a house- hold level) and the temporal scale (between 1 min and 1 h) for parts of the dis-
tribution grid for which previously only spatially aggregated measurements on
the substation and transformer level have been available. At first glance, the main motivation of distribution system operators (DSOs) to install electricity
meters is the efficient integration of billing data into the existing billing systems
by avoiding manual data gathering. It also facilitates the tracking in case of cus- tomers moving to a different property or changing their electricity supplier. This
digitalization of electricity consumers is additionally an excellent opportunity
for a better operation and planning of active distribution grids. Indeed, DSOs used to monitor load flows on a medium-voltage level for an ensemble of con-
sumers whereas the low-voltage grid was considered as a black box, but the
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00006-1
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
108 CHAPTER 6: Unsupervised Learning Methods for Power System Data Analysis
development of smart meters that gather energy data in single households
changes the situation. According to their habits, single consumers or a couple of consumers can have a significant influence on the state of the distribution
system, especially on the voltage, which might induce unexpected stresses in
the nearby grid components. Instead of overdimensioning the grid infrastruc- ture, DSOs have now the possibility to rely on high-resolution measurements
for an enhanced visibility of their system state. This is all the more important
given the increasing share of renewable energy feed-in in the distribution sys- tem, which imposes further grid operation challenges and would require the
active participation of all entities connected to the grid, including consumers.
In this chapter, a comprehensive data-driven clustering approach is presented,
going from a proper data preparation to the visualization of results in an intu-
itive way. The analysis is part of the project Optimized Distribution Grid Operation by Utilization of Smart Metering Data funded by the Swiss Commission for Tech-
nology and Innovation (CTI [1]) and carried out at the ETH Zurich. This is
based on smart meter data that has been gathered by “Industrielle Werke Basel” (IWB [2]), the public utility of the City of Basel, and processed by the ETH spin-
off company Adaptricity [3] that develops simulation and optimization soft-
ware tools for adapting electric distribution grids for the transition toward renewable energies. Notice that, in this case study, data is pseudonymized
for privacy reasons such that no additional information on the type or habits
of individual consumers is available, except the load profiles. Nevertheless, the distribution grid of the City of Basel is equipped with so-called data concentra-
tors (DCs) that collect measurements from a manageable number of smart
meters within a defined neighborhood before forwarding the data to the central server of IWB. The address of each DC as well as the assignment of smart meters
to their DC is known, which gives an indication of the approximate location of
each consumer inside the city’s neighborhoods.
The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows: Section 2 describes more
precisely the smart meter data used in this case study and related preprocessing tasks to obtain a tidy dataset. Section 3 provides the necessary theoretical basis
concerning K-Means, one of the most widely used clustering algorithm.
Section 4 details an approach to provide DSOs with useful knowledge based on the clustering of smart meter data. Section 5 finally summarizes the ideas
developed in this chapter and enhances the benefits of unsupervised learning
methods for power system data analysis.
2 SMART METER DATA PREPARATION
Good quality data is a necessary condition to obtain meaningful outcomes
from a learning algorithm in terms of accuracy and interpretability. Generally,
1092 Smart Meter Data Preparation
two facets of data preprocessing can be distinguished. On the one hand, real
measurements are usually gathered from different sources and contain incon- sistencies, noise, or data gaps. After consistent data integration, suitable prep-
aration techniques such as an anomaly detection, data cleaning and missing
values imputation allow to enhance the data quality. On the other hand, learn- ing methods that give actual value to measurements generally do not process
the entire dataset but work on specific features that need to be selected from
the dataset. A detailed features extraction process for clustering purposes is pre- sented in Section 4.
IWB is currently deploying the largest smart meter infrastructure in all of the German speaking countries with more than 50,000 equipped customers so
far, where the active energy consumption is recorded every 15 min. The dataset
used for analysis spans from April 2014 to September 2016. As mentioned above, it is important to tidy raw data by properly dealing with anomalies
and missing values. Corrupt measurement devices must be discarded while pre-
serving consumers with an uncommon but still correct profile. It also makes sense to work only with load profiles that can reasonably capture the habits
of the consumer and that are relevant for the subsequent analysis. Therefore,
from all equipped customers, only the ones whose electricity consumption has been recorded for at least 1 year and is greater than a threshold of
100 kWh/year remain in the dataset. In addition, energy time-series often con-
tain missing values, due to both sporadic failures of individual meters and con- nection issues for a group of devices. Smart meters showing more than 10% of
missing values or exhibiting data gaps larger than 2 weeks are simply discarded
whereas the remaining ones are subject to a missing values imputation. Data gaps smaller than 1 h are filled by linear regression. Bigger data gaps are
imputed by the average of a couple of values at the same instant and on the
same weekday in the surrounding weeks. To complete this anomaly detection and data cleaning process, load profiles with more than 30% of zero values are
removed from the dataset since a large amount of zero values in a consumption
profile is a typical characteristic of corrupt meters. Consequently, the final data- set consists of more than 30,000 clean time-series (15 min sampling period)
with a duration going from 12 to 30 months (i.e., 35,040–87,744 values per time-series). This overall dataset is about 16 GB large, which is considered as a Big Data problem in the context of power systems. Nevertheless, features
extracted for clustering purposes represent a considerably smaller amount of
data (a few MB). This is relatively small in comparison with the necessary data for forecasting that can be dozens of times larger than the original dataset.
This data preparation phase and the creation of following charts are based on the software tool R [4] due to the ease of programming and its wide variety of
statistical and graphical methods. Although the processing of large dataset can
be time-intensive, its compatibility with most databases as well as parallel
110 CHAPTER 6: Unsupervised Learning Methods for Power System Data Analysis
processing tools like APACHE SPARK [5] makes R a comprehensive and pow-
erful platform in the field of big data analysis.
2.1 Statistical Analysis
At this point, a statistical analysis of the dataset can already give some insight
into the variety of metered consumers. Figs. 1 and 2 represent their distribution
according to the mean energy consumption and to the correlation with the out- side temperature. Notice that both histograms exhibit a Gaussian shape when
the logarithm of energy is considered.
Yearly energy consumption (kWh)
Mean active energy per year
3000
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0
1e + 02 1e + 03 1e + 04 1e + 05
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Histogram of the active load consumption per year.
Correlation of active energy with temperature
6000
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Correlation coefficient
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Histogram of the correlation coefficient of load profiles with the outside temperature.
1113 Clustering Algorithm
First, although most of the loads are residential customers (e.g., households)
and consume a few MWh per year (mean of 3 MWh/year), some commercial and industrial customers whose yearly consumption can reach several hundred
MWh are also part of the dataset. Special attention should be paid to them, due
to their significant contribution to changes in the grid state. Second, one can observe a considerable diversity concerning their dependence to the tempera-
ture even if the majority is barely influenced by the meteorological conditions.
Positively correlated load profiles mainly characterize customers which are gen- erally active in the daytime or in summer. Conversely, negatively correlated
profiles suggest the presence of electrical heating appliances. DSOs could then
benefit from this knowledge on a local scale and better anticipate the demand of temperature-sensitive customers.
These two examples illustrate how a simple statistical analysis can help to pro- vide a first evaluation of the characteristic features of consumers. However, it is
somewhat difficult for DSOs to directly enhance the grid operation based on
simple statistics which need to be properly interpreted. This chapter addresses therefore machine learning methods such as clustering techniques that can give
a deeper understanding of the different types of electricity consumers in an
intuitive way. Especially, these methods focus on the marginal customers that might not be perceptible on an aggregate level but still play a role locally in the
distribution grid.
3 CLUSTERING ALGORITHM
An unsupervised learning method is an algorithm that is trained to discover some hidden structure in a certain dataset. Unlike supervised learning methods
that classify instances or build a regression function, features in unsupervised
learning are not associated with a label, i.e., the outcome cannot be compared with a supposedly good answer. Unsupervised learning includes various
approaches such as Hidden Markov Models (HMM), dimensionality reduction,
or anomaly detection. One of the most popular methods is nevertheless the K-Means clustering algorithm which is detailed in this section and applied to
the smart meter data described above. Notice that most of the numerical com-
puting tools (R, MATLAB) and machine learning environments (H2O, WEKA) as well as libraries in Java or Python contain an implementation of the K-Means
algorithm.
The objective of clustering is to group together similar instances, also called
measurements or observations in the data mining literature. In this case, it
enables to detect multiple types of consumers among the heterogeneous pop- ulation. Initially, features need to be extracted from a tidy dataset to serve as
benchmarks for the formation of clusters. The number of clusters K also has
112 CHAPTER 6: Unsupervised Learning Methods for Power System Data Analysis
to be defined depending on the data diversity, on the number and type of fea-
tures, and on the clustering purpose. A couple of clusters might be sufficient if the main types of loads are of interest. However, several dozen groups enable
the capture of more subtle differences among the clusters and can reveal
uncommon consumers. More detail about the appropriate number of clusters and the selection of suitable features for power system analysis is provided in
the following section.
Fig. 3 illustrates how the K-Means clustering algorithm works to build three
clusters based on the Fisher’s Iris dataset. This famous dataset is often used
in statistical classification and consists of the features of 150 flowers belonging to three iris species. Here, feature 1 corresponds to the sepal length and feature 2
is the sepal width, and both are normalized. In order to create three clusters,
three points called “cluster centroids” first have to be initialized. For example, K ¼ 3 examples in the training set can be arbitrarily picked as the first centroids. “K-Means++” is another algorithm for the selection of initial values, where only
Iteration 0
F e a tu
re 2
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Iteration 3
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FIG. 3
Iterative process of the K-Means algorithm to build three clusters out of the Iris dataset.
1134 Clustering Approach And Visualization
one centroid is chosen totally randomly. Then, one computes the Euclidean
norm between that point and remaining instances, which is used to define a weighted probability distribution from which the next centroid is picked ran-
domly. This process is repeated until all centroids are chosen. The choice of
these first centroids is crucial since it influences the convergence of the method and the final cluster formation, and K-Means++ usually outperforms the ran-
dom initialization. After the initialization phase, K-Means is based on an iter-
ative process with basically two tasks. First, a cluster assignment step goes through each of the examples and assigns them to the nearest centroid in terms
of Euclidean distance. Second, a cluster update step moves the K cluster cen-
troids to the average of all data points assigned to each of them. These two steps are then iterated until centroids stabilize, which implies that the algorithm has
converged. Thus, three iterations of K-Means are necessary to cluster the Iris
dataset.
4 CLUSTERING APPROACH AND VISUALIZATION
4.1 Features Extraction
According to the type of partitioning that is of interest among consumers,
diverse features must be extracted from the smart meter profiles. It is particu- larly important to gather the right amount of information which is representa-
tive of the consumer habits without overwhelming the clustering algorithm
with unnecessary data. Fig. 4 shows a MATLAB-based graphical user interface (GUI) that gives an overview of the wide variety on features which can be
selected for the cluster analysis. Besides the usual statistical measures like the
mean energy consumption, the standard deviation and the maximum energy value, some more advanced features require the extraction of multiple values.
For example, a typical pattern consists of computing the average profile over a predefined period like a day or a week, and normalizing it. Based on a 15 min
sampling period, this would result in the creation of 96 features for a typical
daily pattern. Furthermore, before the installation of smart meters in house- holds, the only information available to DSOs concerning their customers
was the total consumption per billing period. Currently, one can easily get
insight into daily, weekly, or seasonal fluctuations for each single metered load. For example, the energy requirements in a household, an office, or a shop dur-
ing working days typically differ from the needs at the weekend. The peak
demand can notably be inferred from high-resolution measurements with the aim of detecting the critical time periods for individual components in
the distribution grid. Additionally, based on the autocorrelation coefficient
with a lag of 1 day or 1 week, customers with an irregular stochastic load demand and therefore probably harder to predict are more easily identifiable
thanks to the clustering process. Finally, the effect of exogenous variables such
FIG. 4
User interface for the selection of clustering features.
114 CHAPTER 6: Unsupervised Learning Methods for Power System Data Analysis
as meteorological data on the electricity consumption (clearly visible during extreme winter days when electricity price peaks are reached) can be inferred.
The ability of a clustering algorithm to automatically point out weather-
sensitive loads can contribute to the decision support tools for the grid opera- tion. Of course, all these features can be combined, which gives an additional
value in comparison to raw statistics when they are processed by clustering.
Notice also that extracting features from the entire measurement period may not be necessary. A good analysis tool should give the possibility to focus on
1154 Clustering Approach And Visualization
specific hours or specific days that are more problematic from the point of view
of the DSO and quickly identify the customers who have the largest impact on grid operation, e.g., who may lead to voltage band violations or the overloading
of lines and transformers.
4.2 Typical Daily Patterns
In this section, two different clustering outcomes are presented and discussed
based on their load profiles in a typical day. For the sake of clarity, the average profile in each cluster is indicated by a black curve. The first example, illustrated
in Fig. 5, relies on normalized typical daily patterns. Considering a 15 min
granularity, 96 features for each consumer have been extracted based on the entire measurement duration and supplied to the clustering algorithm. Notice
that features directly correspond to the plotted data points in this particular
case, providing relatively homogeneous profiles in each category. The black profile represents precisely the cluster centroids. As a rule of thumb, the number
of clusters has been fixed to 25 in order to better detect unusual loads while
having a sufficient amount of consumers per cluster. However, only the six most distinctive clusters are shown and analyzed in the following.
According to the significant peaks during lunchtime and in the evening (i.e., outside regular working hours), it is probable that Cluster 4 mainly consists
of restaurants, cafeterias, and maybe a few households. In contrast, customers
from Cluster 9 have a relatively constant power consumption, typically like 24 h active industrial loads. Nevertheless, it must be kept in mind that profiles
are an average over a large number of days and do not necessarily reflect the
behavior on a single day. However, they can still give insight into the profile of an aggregation of multiple similar loads on a daily basis. For example, typical
daily profiles of electrical heating systems can appear fairly constant due to the
averaging effect. In Cluster 10, energy is mainly consumed between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., which is indicative of the needs of a shop or a department store where
variations in load during opening hours can depend, to a limited degree, on the
number of visitors. Cluster 19 contains the largest number of consumers in the presented subset and likely consists of households as illustrated by their mean
profile. Indeed, a slightly higher demand appears around 6 a.m. and at noon,
indicating a more energy-intensive activity like cooking. Nevertheless, most of the demand occurs after working hours since inhabitants probably come back
from work, use cooking devices, turn on the lights, and watch television. Notice
that a majority of clusters that are not shown here also exhibit this type of pro- files, which suggests that most smart meters are installed at residential customer
sites. Furthermore, offices seem to be assembled in Cluster 23, considering the
characteristic drop at lunchtime and a very low consumption outside of regular business hours. Finally, Cluster 24 mostly consists of ripple-controlled units
Cluster 4 (1376 consumers)
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Cluster 23 (532 consumers)
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Cluster 9 (809 consumers)
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FIG. 5
Clustering of typical daily load profiles.
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1174 Clustering Approach And Visualization
such as boilers that are programmed to start working based on the time of the
day. This is particularly clear at 10 p.m. where the electricity price switches from high tariff to low tariff regime. Customer segmentation is one of the main appli-
cations of clustering with metered energy data and some DSOs make use of this
information to implement dynamic pricing strategies with the aim of smooth- ening the demand by encouraging consumers to shift some of their activities to
less critical hours. This cluster analysis can obviously be extended to an entire
week, where a considerable energy drop will be visible at the weekend for some of the categories.
As shown in Fig. 6, a further interesting analysis is the evolution of the typical profile according to the mean energy consumption. In this case, there is only
one feature and 15 clusters have been created. On average, small consumers
exhibit a typical household pattern even if their individual profile can be of any shape. Nevertheless, the more energy is consumed, the more rectangular
the mean load profile looks like while the usual household evening peak tends
to vanish. This can certainly be explained by the higher share of commercial and industrial loads that are mainly active during regular working hours with
a fairly constant energy demand. This is furthermore confirmed if one considers
the weekly profile, where small consumers show a higher activity at the week- end, which gradually decreases with rising power consumption. As it has
already been observed in Fig. 1, the size of clusters drastically decreases while
the power consumption per customer increases. Finally, the last cluster pre- sented here indicates that no specific trend can be expected for very large con-
sumers. Again, this type of data mining can easily be combined with other
measures or focus on a smaller set of customers, e.g., living in the same neigh- borhood. Notice, though, the added value provided by an unsupervised learn-
ing algorithm compared to a simple histogram although both analysis methods
rely on the same metric. In this way, a DSO can potentially get a very quick intu- ition of a customer’s behavior on the sole basis of its electricity bill, keeping in
mind that it does not replace a more thorough and specific analysis.
4.3 Visualization Tool
It becomes clear that the application of clustering techniques to energy time-
series provides interesting insights for the grid operator. However, it is also important to present this knowledge to the grid operators in an intuitive and
useful way. Therefore, this section shows an interactive Leaflet [6] based visu-
alization tool developed at Adaptricity [3]. In addition to standard statistical analysis and charts of typical patterns, clustering outcomes are displayed in
the form of pie charts based on the smart meter location. This provides a good
overview of the load variety across the grid under consideration. In the case of the City of Basel, the exact smart meter location is not available; however
0.9 MWh/year (9470 consumers)
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FIG. 6
Typical daily profiles of metered loads clustered according to their mean energy demand.
1 1 8
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A n a ly s is
1194 Clustering Approach And Visualization
approximate DC-based addresses are sufficiently precise to obtain an accurate
picture of consumers spread over the city.
According to the selected features, one can observe the penetration of a certain
load category in each area of a distribution system where smart metering devices are installed. Let us start with the example shown in Fig. 7. As suggested
by Silipo et al. [7] a day has been divided into five periods, i.e., early morning
(7 a.m.–9 a.m.), morning (9 a.m.–1 p.m.), afternoon (1 p.m.– p.m.), evening (5 p.m.–9 p.m.), and night (9 p.m.–7 a.m.). For each time window, a feature represents the percentage of energy used, yielding five features that sum up
to 100% for every load. Notice that this clustering process is similar to the
FIG. 7
Visualization of metered loads clustered according to their share of energy consumed at different representative periods of the day (early
morning, morning, afternoon, evening, night).
120 CHAPTER 6: Unsupervised Learning Methods for Power System Data Analysis
typical daily load profile presented in the previous section with the exception
that a much lower number of features are used for the clustering. Based on this, five clusters are created with K-Means. A small number of clusters are preferable
for the sake of simplicity in a visualization tool. The box at the bottom right
corner of the figure summarizes the cluster characteristics, including the num- ber of related consumers and the cluster centroids (i.e., mean feature values). In
this case, the smallest group is Cluster 1 (red) with less than 5% of metered con-
sumers and consists of so-called night owls that mainly consume overnight. A large part of them are situated in areas with a majority of apartment buildings,
like in the most easterly neighborhood of Basel, and their typical daily profile
reveals that they are configured to be active especially from 10 p.m. on (off peak tariff ). This gives a good indication of the buildings equipped with electric
boilers, which implies higher power flows at night in these areas. Since these
loads appear to be particularly price sensitive, they would be most likely to par- ticipate if the DSO introduces demand side participation. Conversely, con-
sumers of Cluster 3 (yellow) clearly have their highest activity during business hours and are mainly concentrated in the old city center where shops,
museums, offices, and restaurants are located, which accounts for 6% of the
total number of customers. A high share of these loads also characterizes a shopping mall in the north of Basel. The other three clusters encompass the vast
majority of the IWB customers and are well represented across the entire distri-
bution grid. Cluster 2 (blue) is rather active between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. and might include offices, restaurants, and a few households. Clusters 4 (green)
and 5 (orange) seem to contain a great number of residential loads and prob-
ably restaurants since the corresponding consumers are characterized by a rel- atively high activity in the evening. To sum up, the tool facilitates the
visualization of the energy requirements in the different parts of the grid and
at different periods of a typical day. This concept can then be adapted to longer periods like a whole year instead of a day in order to compare the various levels
of consumption according to the seasons. In addition, a similar analysis where
only the data over a specific period (e.g., working days or winter) is considered during the features extraction process provides complementary information
and should be more representative of the system state during this
specific period.
As previously mentioned, it is important for a system operator to monitor
temperature-sensitive consumers and this visualization tool enables the easy
identification of such consumers if the correlation of load profiles with the tem- perature profile is used as a clustering feature. Fig. 8 exhibits the exact same
loads but clustered according to their dependency on the temperature. While the statistical analysis presented in Section 2.1 shows a quasi-perfect normal
distribution around zero, K-Means could build distinct meaningful groups
based on this unique feature. Notice that in Switzerland, households are
FIG. 8
Visualization of metered loads clustered according to their correlation with the outside temperature.
1214 Clustering Approach And Visualization
usually not equipped with air conditioners and electrical heating systems are
less common than gas-fired ones. Hence, half of the consumers belong to the same cluster (red) and are barely influenced by the temperature. Most prob-
ably, they are not equipped with an electrical heating system. Cluster 3 (yellow)
is the second largest group with 30% of all customers and the load profile of its members is slightly correlated with the temperature. However, this can be
explained to a large extent from the fact that they consume mainly during
the daytime, i.e., when temperatures are naturally higher. Furthermore, although the number of customers in Cluster 4 (green) is relatively small, it
is an interesting category since they have the largest positive correlation and
they are situated in characteristic areas in the city. Even if these consumers have a higher demand in electricity during the daytime, they are definitely influenced
122 CHAPTER 6: Unsupervised Learning Methods for Power System Data Analysis
by warm weather conditions. Indeed, they are almost exclusively located in
shopping areas or at the main football stadium, where air conditioners are usu- ally running on hot days. Moreover, negatively correlated consumers are
divided into two groups. First, Cluster 5 (orange) consists of many customers
that have a tendency to consume slightly more when the temperature decreases, which might indicate the presence of electrical heating appliances. In addition,
almost all neighborhoods of Basel contain a small share of these consumers to
varying degrees. Secondly, Cluster 2 (blue) shows the highest negative correla- tion with the temperature. On one hand, it consists of loads that are naturally
very temperature sensitive. On the other hand, price-sensitive loads like boilers
are also part of this cluster since, in addition to a potential impact of low tem- peratures, they get even more correlated due to their overnight consumption.
Although most of the customers are mainly active during the daytime, a major-
ity are still negatively correlated with the temperature, which suggests that this incidental correlation effect is limited. Hence, DSOs can notably gain a good
insight into the grid areas that need a higher electricity supply during extreme weather conditions.
To conclude, the visualization tool makes the link between the pieces of infor-
mation computed by the clustering algorithm and the decision makers for an optimal grid operation. Presented under the form of cluster pie charts, cluster-
ing outcomes can give an intuitive and comprehensive picture of the system
state. Nevertheless, the quality of knowledge provided depends mainly on the selection of suitable features. Furthermore, even though the dataset
has not been reduced for both examples explained in this section, the extrac-
tion of these features out of the time period of interest delivers more accurate results.
5 CONCLUSIONS
To summarize, a huge amount of data has been collected for the last few years
in the low-voltage grid by smart meters, which allows to leverage additional benefits for the grid operation. Nevertheless, it is important to develop suitable
methods that can deal with the quantity of data and turn it into knowledge
which must be quickly and easily interpretable by DSOs and be able to support them in the grid operation. While the high spatial and temporal resolution pro-
vided by smart meters enables a previously unattainable degree of detail in state
estimation and other grid functionalities, unsupervised learning techniques such as clustering add value by linking and putting into perspective the multi-
ple consumers.
In this chapter, a complete clustering approach has been presented on the basis
of large sets of measurement data gathered by IWB, the DSO of the City of Basel,
1235 Conclusions
and enhanced by the ETH spin-off Adaptricity. First of all, it is necessary to cor-
rectly prepare the available raw data in order not to process useless or unreliable information. This notably includes proper data integration, the removal of large
anomalies, and the imputation of missing values. Secondly, the extraction of
clustering features is the key element of a successful cluster analysis since they define the points of similarity between energy consumers in order to build clus-
ters. They can consist of standard statistical metrics, a combination of these met-
rics, the dependence of load profiles on weather variables, or more advanced features like a typical profile. Thirdly, a number of clusters have to be chosen
and extracted features based on all consumers are used to train the K-Means clus-
teringalgorithm.Assoonastheclustersarecomputed,eachmeteredconsumeris assignedtooneofthem.Finally,theseclusteringoutcomescanbevisualizedona
map of the city in combination with the postal address of consumers or of the
DC, depending on anonymization requirements.
Apart from the data preparation phase, clustering is not a time-intensive
method compared to other learning algorithms such as forecasting and adds a significant value to the measurement data. Especially, a cluster analysis is
often of interest to detect the most uncommon loads. Their behavior with
respect to certain characteristics can be considerably different from the con- sumers of the main clusters and, as it has been shown thanks to the visualiza-
tion tool, they are usually located in specific areas of the city. Therefore, a good
knowledge of these unusual loads can notably support the DSO to rapidly cope with critical states of the low-voltage grid. For example, a large concentration of
temperature-sensitive consumers at a certain branch can heavily load the
nearby grid components in case of extreme weather conditions. The extent of this issue is not necessarily visible on an aggregation level and can go unde-
tected if no suitable tools for analyzing and visualizing smart meter data are
available. Furthermore, the customer segmentation obtained by clustering can set the basis for the implementation of demand side participation and
dynamic pricing. In this way, the distribution grid can get more flexible and,
for example, better integrate renewable energy if the DSO were able to reason- ably estimate where this surplus of energy can flow and be immediately
absorbed.
Finally, smart metering is a recent source of measurement data in power sys-
tems and such a large amount of information on the end consumer has not pre-
viously been available. Hence, new challenges arise from the software perspective in order to get the most value out of it. More data implies more
knowledge if, and only if, suitable methods and tools for data processing, anal-
ysis, and visualization are available. Although unsupervised learning tech- niques are usually combined with Big Data technologies such as parallel
computing tools, the application to power system data analysis is a very new
field of research and opens up great opportunities.
124 CHAPTER 6: Unsupervised Learning Methods for Power System Data Analysis
References [1] Commission for Technology and Innovation, https://www.kti.admin.ch/kti/en/home.html.
[2] Industrielle Werke Basel, https://www.iwb.ch.
[3] Adaptricity AG, https://www.adaptricity.com.
[4] The R Project for Statistical Computing, https://www.r-project.org.
[5] Apache Spark, https://spark.apache.org.
[6] Leaflet, https://leafletjs.com.
[7] R. Silipo, P. Winters, Big Data, Smart Energy, and Predictive Analytics, 2013. KNIME, Technical
Report.
- Unsupervised Learning Methods for Power System Data Analysis
- Introduction
- Smart Meter Data Preparation
- Statistical Analysis
- Clustering Algorithm
- Clustering Approach and Visualization
- Features Extraction
- Typical Daily Patterns
- Visualization Tool
- Conclusions
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-7---Deep-Learning-for-Power-System-_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-Pow.pdf
CHAPTER 7
Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
Elena Mocanu, Phuong H. Nguyen, Madeleine Gibescu Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Unprecedented high volumes of data are available in the smart grid context, facilitated by the
growth of home energy management systems and advanced metering infrastructure. In order to automatically extract knowledge from, and take advantage of this useful information to improve
grid operation, recently developed machine learning techniques can be used, in both supervised
and unsupervised ways. The proposed chapter will focus on deep learning methods and will be
structured as follows: Firstly, as a starting point with respect to the state of the art, the most known deep learning concepts, such as deep belief networks and high-order restricted Boltzmann machine
(i.e., conditional restricted Boltzmann machine, factored conditional restricted Boltzmann
machine, four-way conditional restricted Boltzmann machine), are presented. Both, their theoret- ical advantages and limitations are discussed, such as computational requirements, convergence,
and stability. Consequently, two applications for building energy prediction using supervised
and unsupervised deep learning methods will be presented. The chapter concludes with a glimpse
into the future trends highlighting some open questions as well as new possible applications, which are expected to bring benefits toward better planning and operation of the smart grid, by helping
customers to adopt energy conserving behaviors and their transition from a passive to an active role.
125
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 From Neural Network Towards Deep Learning
The power to predict an uncertain event makes the science community to con-
tinuously search for more and more accurate methods. In an attempt to deter-
mine which approaches are the most popular, and to integrate deep learning methods in the existing literature, a short bibliometric analysis of the collec-
tions of publications related with the electricity prediction problem is per-
formed by using specialized queries on Scopus database. With focus on energy prediction there are 6613 publications in the last decade, from which
in 2015 there are 839 publications. On the one hand, in Fig. 1 is reported
the distribution of this existing literature based on the type of publications (conferences, articles, reviews, and others). On the other hand, using specified
queries we classified these papers into machine learning and nonmachine
learning methods.
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00007-3
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
NN—Conferences NN—Articles NN—Reviews NN—Other types NN and SVM—Conferences NN and SVM—Articles NN and SVM—Reviews NN and SVM—Other types SVM—Conferences SVM—Articles SVM—Reviews SVM—Other types Non ML—Conferences Non ML—Articles Non ML—Reviews Non ML—Other types
Number of publication (#)
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
T im
e (
ye a r)
FIG. 1
Electricity prediction—a summary of the Scopus-indexed publications with focus on electricity prediction in
the years 2005–15.
200,000 Electricity prediction NN ANN RNN DNN DL SVM
150,000
100,000
50,000
0 1910
2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015
1920 1930 1940 1950 1960
Time (year)
N u m
b e r
o f p u b lic
a tio
n s
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
FIG. 2
Prediction—a summary of the Scopus-indexed publications with focus on prediction over the last century
(i.e.,1909–2015), including a zoom over the years 2005–15.
126 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
Specifically, the overall count for Neural Networks is 2380 publications and
820 for Support Vector Machine, while a number of 703 publications are using both methods simultaneously. From a more general perspective, in Fig. 2 a
short overview over the evolution of the machine learning methods applied
to prediction is shown. A zoom over the last decade is added. This is a starting point with respect to the state of the art, and a glimpse into the future trends in
prediction with a focus on electricity prediction.
Overall, perhaps the most investigated machine learning (ML) methods are
based on neural networks (NNs) and their variations (e.g., artificial neural net-
works (ANNs), recurrent neural networks (RNNs), deep neural networks (DNNs), or deep belief networks (DBNs)). It is worth mentioning that up to
2016, the collection of publications indexed by Scopus and related with
1272 Supervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
NNs counts for more than one million. From this, we can observe that Deep
Learning models (including DNNs) represent the most important trend in the last years.
1.2 Deep Learning Methods
Since its conception, deep learning [1] is widely studied and applied, from pure
academic research to large-scale industrial applications, due to its success in dif-
ferent real-world machine learning problems such as audio recognition [2], rein- forcement learning (RL) [3], transfer learning [4], and activity recognition [5].
Deep learning models are ANNs with multiple layers of hidden neurons, which
have connections only among neurons belonging to consecutive layers, but have no connections within the same layer. In general, these models are composed by
basic building blocks, such as restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs) [6]. In
turn, RBMs have proven to be successfully not just providing good initialization weights in deep architectures (in both supervised and unsupervised learning) but
also as standalone models in other types of applications. Examples are density
estimation to model human choice [7], collaborative filtering [8], information retrieval [9], or multiclass classification [10]. Thus, an important research direc-
tion is to improve the performance of RBMs on any component, e.g., computa-
tional time, generative and discriminative capabilities [11].
So, we start by putting in the context of the recent developments our proposed
methods, and we argue that a unified topological investigation of this deep learning architecture based on the order of tensor factorization, as depicted
in Fig. 3, could highlight two general directions of research. By increasing
the number of hidden layers in the well-known ANNs, nowadays we are refer- ring them as deep networks and it is the principal direction in deep learning
(Fig. 3, vertical shadowed area). Nevertheless, based on the order of the mul-
tiplicative interactions (tensor connection) between various layers of RBMs and their derivatives a second direction using higher order tensor factorization
arises. Therefore, the primary contribution of this chapter is to extend the
red shadowed area, while in the remaining sections both areas are covered.
2 SUPERVISED ENERGY PREDICTION USING DEEP LEARNING
Commercial and industrial buildings represent a tremendous amount of the global energy used. A future energy ecosystem is emerging, which connects
green buildings with a smart power grid to optimize energy flows between
them. This requires prediction of energy consumption in a wide range of time horizons. It is important to predict not only at the aggregated level but to go
deep into the individual building level so distributed generation resources
can be deployed based on the local forecast. Decomposition of demand
5
1
2
3
4 N
u m
b e r
o f
h id
d e n la
ye rs
1st 2nd 3th 4th 5th
RBMPerceptron
Tensor connection
ANN
CRBM
RBM
FCRBM
FCRBM
FW-CRBM
FW-CRBM
Five-way CRBM
M a ch
in e
Five-way CRBM
5
4
3
2
1
To ta
l n u m
b e r
o f
la ye
rs
D e e p B
o ltz
m a n n
D e e p B
e lie
f n e tw
o rk
FIG. 3
Deep Learning—a unified schematic representation of high-order restricted Boltzmann machine
architectures and their corresponding factorization.
128 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
forecasting helps analyze energy consumption patterns and identify the prime
targets for energy conservation. Moreover, prediction of temporal energy con- sumption enables building managers to plan out the energy usage over time,
shift energy usage to off-peak periods, and make more effective energy purchase plans.
The complexity of building energy behavior and the uncertainty of the influenc-
ing factors, such as more fluctuations in demand, make energy prediction a hard problem. These fluctuations are given by weather conditions, the building
construction and thermal properties of the physical materials used, the occu-
pants and their behavior, sublevel system components lighting or HVAC (heat- ing, ventilating, and air conditioning). Many approaches have been proposed
aiming at accurate and robust prediction of the energy consumption. In gen-
eral, they can be divided into two types. The first type of models is based on physical principles to calculate thermal dynamics and energy behavior at the
building level. Some of them include models of space systems, natural ventila-
tion, air conditioning system, passive solar, photovoltaic systems, financial issue, occupants’ behavior, climate environment, and so on. Overall, the
numerous approaches depend on the type of building and the number of
parameter used. The second type is based on statistical methods. These
1292 Supervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
methods are used to predict building energy consumption by correlating energy
consumption with influencing variables such as weather and energy cost. We refer to Krarti [12] and Dounis [13] for a more comprehensive discussion about
building energy systems, and more recently reviews [14,15]. Moreover, to shape
the evolution of future buildings systems there are also some hybrid approaches which combine some of the above models to optimize predictive
performance, such as [16–18]. Actually, the most widely used machine learning methods for energy prediction are ANNs and Support Vector Machines [19]. Hidden Markov model (HMM) [20] is other popular stochastic model for
time-series analyses. This model shows good results in different fields, from
bio-informatics to stock market and it was not so much investigated in the con- text of building energy prediction [21].
This section focuses especially on deep learning methods for energy prediction, by the characterization of load profiles on measured data. Due to the fact that
energy consumption can be seen as a time-series problem, we proposed the use
of conditional restricted Boltzmann machine (CRBM) [8] and factored condi- tional restricted Boltzmann machines (FCRBMs), recently introduced stochas-
tic machine learning methods which were used successfully until now to model
highly nonlinear time series (e.g., human motion style, structured output pre- diction) [22–24]. As a secondary contribution, we adapt the FCRBM architec- ture for energy prediction problems by merging the style and feature labels into
one, and by rewriting the equations and the derivatives of the learning rules according to the new configuration of the model.
2.1 Conditional Restricted Boltzmann Machine
CRBMs [22] are an extension over RBMs [6] used to model time-series data and
human activities [25]. They are energy-based models for unsupervised learning. These models are probabilistic, with stochastic nodes and layers, which make
them less vulnerable to local minima. Further, due to their multiple layers and
their neural configurations, RBMs possess excellent generalization capabilities [1]. Formally, a RBM consists of visible and hidden binary layers. The visible
layer represents the data, while the hidden increases the learning capacity by
enlarging the class of distributions that can be represented to an arbitrary com- plexity [25]. In CRBMs models [22] the RBMs is extended by including a con-
ditional history layer. The general architecture of this model is depicted in Fig. 4
and the total energy function is calculated considering all possible interactions between neurons and weights/biases, such as
E v, h, u; Wð Þ ¼ �vTWvhh�vTbv �uTWuvv�uTWuhh�hTbh (1)
where u¼[u1, …,unu] represents a real valued vector with all history neurons, with nu being the index of the last history neuron (input), v¼[v1, …,vnv] is a
h
b
a
v
u
Wuv
Wvh
Wuh
Estimated building energy consumption
Historical values (building energy consumption,
time variable, ...etc.)
CRBM
Output
Input
FIG. 4
The general architecture of conditional restricted Boltzmann machines, where u is the conditional history
layer (input), h is the hidden layer, and v is the visible layer (output); the hidden layer has binary neurons and
input layer represents the real values and the others are Gaussian values.
130 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
real valued vector collecting all visible units vi, and nv is the index of the last
visible neuron (output), h¼[h1, …,hnh] is a binary vector collecting all the hid- den units hj, with nh being the index of the last hidden neuron. W
vh2ℝnh�nv represents the matrix of all weights connecting v and h, Wuv2ℝnu�nv represents the matrix of all weights connecting u and v, and Wuh2ℝnu�nh represents the matrix of all weights connecting u and h. The biases for hidden neurons are
given by bh2ℝnh and the biases for visible neurons bv2ℝnv.
It is worth mentioning that in comparison with ANNs, the weights in CRBMs
can be bidirectional. More exactly, Wvh is bidirectional. The other weight matri-
ces Wuv and Wuh are unidirectional.
2.1.1 Inference in CRBM In CRBMs probabilistic inference means determining two conditional distribu-
tions. The first is the probability of the hidden layer conditioned on all the
other layers, i.e., p(hjv,u) while the second is the probability of the present layer conditioned on the others, such as p(vjh,u). Since there are no connec- tions between the neurons in the same layer, inference can be done in parallel
for each unit type, leading to
p h ¼ 1j u, vð Þ ¼ sig uTWuh + vTWvh + bh � �
(2)
where sig(x)¼1/1+exp(�x), and
1312 Supervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
p vj h, uð Þ ¼ N Wuv T
u + Wvhh + bv, σ2 � �
(3)
where for convenience σ is chosen to be 1. Probability of the hidden neurons is given by a sigmoidal function evaluated on the total input to each hidden unit and probability of the visible neurons is given by a Gaussian distribution over
the total input to each visible unit.
2.1.2 Learning for CRBM Using Contrastive Divergence Parameters are fitted by maximizing the likelihood function. In order to max-
imize the likelihood of the model, the gradients of the energy function with respect to the weights have to be calculated. Because of the difficulty of com-
puting the derivative of the log-likelihood gradients, Hinton [26] proposed
an approximation method called contrastive divergence (CD). In maximum likelihood, the learning phase actually minimizes the Kullback-Leibler (KL)
measure between the input data distribution and the approximate model. In
CD, learning follows the gradient of:
CDn∝DKL p0 xð Þj j p∞ xð Þð Þ�DKL pn xð Þj j p∞ xð Þð ÞÞ (4)
where, pn(�) is the distribution of a Markov chain running for n steps. The update rules for each of the weight matrices and biases can be computed by
deriving the energy function with respect to each of these variables (i.e., the vis-
ible weights). Formally, this can be written as:
∂E v, h, uð Þ ∂Wuh
¼ �uhT; ∂E v, h, uð Þ
∂Wuv ¼ �uvT;
∂E v, h, uð Þ ∂Wvh
¼ �vhT (5)
The update equation for the biases of each of the layers is
∂E v, h, uð Þ ∂bv
¼ �v and ∂E v, h, uð Þ
∂bh ¼ �h (6)
Since the visible units are conditionally independent given the hidden units and vice versa, learning can be performed using one-step Gibbs sampling,
which is carried in two half steps: (1) update all the hidden units, and (2)
update all the visible units. Thus, in CDn the weight updates are done as follows:
Wuhτ + 1 ¼ W uh τ + α uh
T � �
data � uhT � �
recon
� � (7)
Wuvτ + 1 ¼ W uv τ + α uv
T � �
data � uvT � �
recon
� � (8)
Wvhτ + 1 ¼ W vh τ + α vh
T � �
data � vhT � �
recon
� � (9)
132 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
and the biases updates are
bvτ + 1 ¼ b v τ + α vh idata � vh irecon
� � (10)
bhτ + 1 ¼ b h τ + α hh idata � hh irecon
� � (11)
where τ is the iteration and α is the learning rate.
2.2 Factored Conditional Restricted Boltzmann Machine
This section introduces FCRBMs, shown in Fig. 5. For this method an intuition describing the model as well as the configuration is discussed. Secondly,
FCRBMs’ mathematical details including the energy function, probabilistic
inference, and learning/update rules are detailed. To formalize FCRBMs, three main ingredients are required. Firstly, an energy function providing scalar
values for a given configuration of the network is essential. Secondly, probabi- listic inference (i.e., the procedure in which conditionals are calculated) needs
to be detailed. Finally, the update/learning rules required for fitting free param-
eters have to be derived.
Taylor et al. [25] introduced the FCRBMs where they add styles and the concept
of factored, multiplicative, three-way interactions to predict multiple styles of
human motion. Originally, FCRBMs consist of the previous three layers from CRBM and two new introduced layers for styles and features. However, to fit
our needs we reduced the style and features layers to one and we used it to rep-
resent different parameters useful for prediction. More exactly, after the afore- mentioned reduction has been done, FCRBM consists of: (1) a real valued
y
h
b
a
v
u
Output Estimated building energy consumption
Input
Wy Wh
Wv
FCRBM
Av
Bh
Bu Au
By
Ay
Historical values (building energy consumption,
time variable, ...etc.)
FIG. 5
The general architecture of factored conditional restricted Boltzmann machines, where u is the conditional
history layer (input), h is the hidden layer, and v is the visible layer (output).
1332 Supervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
visible layer v, (2) a real valued history layer v<t (i.e., v<t ¼ v<t,t�N:t�1, where N2ℕ, (3) a binary hidden layer h, and (4) a style layer y. Each of the above layers is essential for the success of FCRBMs. The visible layer encodes the cur-
rent values of a time series which needs to be predicted. The history of the time
sequence, being the basis of such predictions, is encoded on the history layer. The hidden layer guarantees the discovery of important features essential for the
analysis of the time sequence, while the style layer encodes different parameters
useful in the prediction. To learn the inherent relations between these layers, undirected or directed weights and factors, as shown in Fig. 5, are used as
connections.
More formally, FCRBM defines a joint probability distribution over the visible
v, and hidden h, neurons. The joint distribution is conditioned on the past N
observations v<t, model parameters θ (i.e., W h, Wv, Wy, Av<t, Av, Ay, By, Bv, Bh)
and the style layer y. Similar to CRBM, FCRBM assumes binary stochastic
hidden units and real-valued visible units with additive, Gaussian noise. For
notational ease, as in the original paper (Taylor and Hinton, 2011), we assume σi¼1.
2.2.1 Total Energy for FCRBM The total energy function, E(vt,ht.jv<t,yt) for FCRBM, is computed as the sum of the first- and third-order energy terms as follows:
E ¼ 1
2
Xn1 i¼1
vi,t � âi,tð Þ2 � Xn2 j¼1
b̂j,thj,t
|fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl} EI
�
XF f¼1
Xn1 i¼1
Wvif vi,t Xn2 j¼1
Whjf hj,t Xn3 p¼1
W y pf yp,t
" #
|fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl} EIII
(12)
where EIII is defined as:
EIII ¼ � XF f¼1
Xn1 i¼1
Xn2 j¼1
Xn3 p¼1
Wvif W h jf W
y pf vi,thj,typ,t
h i" #" #" # (13)
where F, n1, n2, and n3 represent the total number of factors and the number of
units in each of the visible, hidden, and label layers, respectively. The terms âi,t and b̂j,t are called dynamic biases, which are defined as:
âi,t ¼ ai + X i
Avi,m X k
A v<t k,m
vk,<t X p
A y p,myp,t (14)
b̂j,t ¼ bj + X n
Bhj,n X k
B v<t k,n
vk,<t X p
B y p,nyp,t (15)
with Ai,m v , Ak,m
v< t , Ap,m y , Bj,n
h , Bk,n v< t ,and Bp,n
y as dynamic biases of each of the layers.
These as well as the weights connections are free parameters that need to be
trained as detailed further.
134 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
2.2.2 Inference in FCRBM Inference in FCRBM is conducted in parallel, since there are no connections
between the neurons in the same layer. Specifically, this means determining two conditional distributions. Firstly, the conditional probability distribution
of the hidden neurons, (hj,t¼1jvtv<tyt), is given by a sigmoidal function eval- uated on the total input to each hidden unit, h∗j,t ¼
P f W
h if
P i W
v if vi,t
P p W
y pf yp,t,
via the factors. Secondly, the probability of the visible neurons,
p(vi,t¼1jhtv<tyt), is given by a Gaussian distribution over the total input, v∗i, j ¼
P f W
v if
P j W
h jf hj,t
P p W
y pf yp,t, to each visible unit via the factors. Therefore,
for each of the jth hidden and ith visible unit, inference is performed using:
p hj,t ¼ 1j vtv<tyt � �
¼ sigmoid b̂j,t + h∗j,t � �
(16)
p vi,t ¼ 1j htv<tytð Þ ¼ N âi,t + v∗i, j, σ 2 i
� � (17)
where N μ, σ2i � �
denotes the Gaussian probability density function with mean μ and variance σi
2.
2.2.3 Learning and Update Rules for FCRBMs The general update rule for all the hyperparameters θ is given by
θτ + 1 ¼ θτ + ρΔθτ + α Δθτ + 1 �γθτð Þ (18)
where τ, ρ, α, and γ represent the update number, momentum, learning rate, and weights decay, respectively. More details regarding the choice of these parameters are described in Hinton [27]. The update rules for each of the weight
matrices and biases can be computed by deriving the energy function from
Eq. (12) with respect to each of these variables (i.e., the factored visible weights, factored label weights, factored hidden weights, and the biases of each of the
layers), yielding:
Weights update: Three update rules corresponding to each of Wv, Wh, and Wy
need to be derived. Firstly, the factored visible weight Wif v is computed by deri-
vating the total energy function, provided in Eq. (12), with respect to Wif v is
∂E vt, htj v<t, yt � �
∂Wv if
¼ �vi,t Xn2 j¼1
Whjf hj,t Xn3 p¼1
W y pf yp,t (19)
Secondly, the factored hidden weights Wjf h are updated. Following the same rea-
soning we obtain:
∂E vt, htj v<t, yt � �
∂Wh jf
¼ �hj,t Xn1 i¼1
Wvif vi,t Xn3 p¼1
W y pf yp,t (20)
1352 Supervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
Thirdly, by deriving the total energy function with respect to Wpf y we obtain the
update rule for the factored label weights:
∂E vt, htj v<t, yt � �
∂Wy pf
¼ �yp,t Xn1 i¼1
Wvif vi,t Xn2 j¼1
Whjf hj,t (21)
Biases update: The derivatives of Eq. (12) to find the update rules for the param-
eters which compose the dynamic biases of the present layer (i.e., Aim v , Ak,m
v< t , Ap,m y ) are
∂E vt, htj v<t, yt � �
∂Avi,m ¼ vi,t
X k
A v<t k,m
vk,<t X p
A y p,myp,t (22)
∂E vt, htj v<t, yt � �
∂Av<t k,m
¼ vk,<t X i
Avi,m X p
A y p,myp,t (23)
∂E vt, htj v<t, yt � �
∂Ayp,m ¼ yp,t
X i
Avi,m X k
A v<t k,m
vk,<t (24)
The derivatives to find the update rules for the parameters which compose the
dynamic biases of the hidden layer (i.e., Bj,n h , Bk,n
v< t ,Bp,n y ) are calculated using a
similar procedure. The model free parameters (i.e., dynamical biases and weights) are learned using CD. Using the energy derivative of the hyperpara-
meters and the CD expression shown in Eq. (4), we can calculate the Δ rule leading to
ΔW∝ ∂E ∂W
0
� ∂E ∂W
k
(25)
ΔA∝ ∂E ∂A
0
� ∂E ∂A
k
(26)
ΔB∝ ∂E ∂B
0
� ∂E ∂B
k
(27)
with k being a Markov chain step running for a total number of K steps and
starting at the original data distribution.
2.3 Experiments and Results
To achieve the goal of energy prediction the ANN, SVM, RNN, CRBM, and FCRBM models are evaluated and compared using a set of measured data.
In this given set the collected data highlights the evolution in time of the
electric power consumption, and other different electrical quantities, in one household with a one-minute sampling rate over a period of almost 4 years.
Specifically, the dataset [28] contains 2,075,259 measurements gathered
136 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
between December 2006 and November 2010 (47 months). In all the experi-
ments performed in this section, we have used the first 3 years of data to train the models and the 4th year to test them. Furthermore, in our prediction
experiments we used the following attributes information from the database:
1. Aggregated active power—Household global minute-averaged active
power. It represents the active energy consumed every minute (in watt- hour) in the household by electrical equipment not measured in
submetering 1, 2, and 3.
2. Energy submetering 1—It corresponds to the kitchen, containing mainly a dishwasher, an oven, and a microwave (in watt-hour of active energy).
3. Energy submetering 2—It corresponds to the laundry room, containing
a washing machine, a tumble dryer, a refrigerator, and a light (in watt-hour of active energy).
4. Energy submetering 3—It corresponds to an electric water heater and an
air conditioner (in watt-hour of active energy).
Predicting of different electrical quantities in an individual household is
directly influenced by human behavior along with many other factors. All of these factors lead to a nonlinear time series. Different scenarios have been cre-
ated to assess the performance of the proposed models. They are briefly
described in Table 1.
In the remaining of this section, the results are presented for each of these sce-
narios in terms of root mean square error (RMSE) while in Mocanu et al. [29] the metrics for prediction assessment include also the correlation coefficient
and a P-value computation in order to gain insights on statistical significance
of the results (Fig. 6 and Table 2).
For all scenarios, it can be observed that the energy prediction for submetering
3, independently of the methods used, in general shows the most inaccurate
results. This can be explained by the not easy predictable behavior of the users regarding the use of the electric water heater. This is also reflected in the
Table 1 Summary of the Experiments
Notation Time Horizon Resolution
Scenario 1 S1 15 min 1 min
Scenario 2 S2 1 h 1 min
Scenario 3 S3 1 day 1 min
Scenario 4 S4 1 day 15 min average
Scenario 5 S5 1 week 15 min average
Scenario 6 S6 1 week 1 h average
Scenario 7 S7 1 year 1 week average
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 0
0.5
1
1.5
2
Time (week average)
A g
re g
a te
d a
ct iv
e p
o w
e r
(k W
)
ANN SVM RNN CRBM FCRBM Real Value
PredictionTraining
FIG. 6
Scenario 7—aggregated active power prediction for a year, with weekly average data, using ANN, SVM,
RNN, CRBM, and FCRBM, versus the true values.
Table 2 Prediction Error in Terms of RMSE for All Seven Scenarios Using ANN, SVM, RNN, CRBM, and FCRBM
Methods S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7
Aggregated active power (kW)
ANN 0.703 0.731 2.529 0.907 1.867 0.784 0.246
SVM 0.649 1.995 1.881 1.344 1.559 0.790 0.188
RNN 0.565 0.939 1.889 1.009 2.807 0.915 0.457
CRBM 0.638 0.903 1.075 1.030 0.951 0.690 0.182
FCRBM 0.621 0.666 0.828 0.899 0.797 0.663 0.170
Energy submetering 1 (Wh)
ANN 7.491 3.100 7.171 9.147 15.189 3.078 0.951
SVM 3.548 2.651 5.056 7.115 5.122 3.443 0.508
RNN 9.680 6.055 10.515 19.625 21.058 9.093 1.278
CRBM 3.068 2.746 6.244 5.103 4.634 3.286 0.493
FCRBM 3.241 2.605 6.193 4.996 4.565 3.128 0.462
Energy submetering 2 (Wh)
ANN 1.852 3.697 4.440 7.284 7.858 8.681 0.500
SVM 0.761 0.948 9.897 5.321 4.883 3.635 0.468
RNN 5.022 7.978 12.301 15.098 14.977 8.848 2.011
CRBM 0.886 1.238 4.840 4.162 4.334 3.481 0.526
FCRBM 0.687 1.105 4.047 3.790 4.260 3.318 0.436
Energy submetering 3 (Wh)
ANN 10.032 12.451 12.236 10.457 10.289 7.469 2.078
SVM 9.637 12.013 10.262 8.469 8.535 6.729 2.001
RNN 10.433 10.417 10.229 11.814 11.412 15.083 6.080
CRBM 11.796 11.509 11.229 7.301 8.299 9.423 2.025
FCRBM 8.971 8.140 8.556 6.837 7.709 6.648 1.579
1372 Supervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
standard deviation of 8.4347 for the energy consumption of submetering 3, being the biggest values from all the electrical quantities analyzed.
Overall, we observed that predicting outliers from the submetering data decreases the predictive performance for all methods significantly. In addition,
3
2.5
1 min 15 min 1 h 1 week
FCRBM CRBM RNN
SVM ANN
Scenario (#)
2
1.5R M
S E
1
0.5
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
FIG. 7
Comparison of the error obtained in all scenarios using aggregated active power measurements.
138 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
this may be reflected by a negative correlation coefficient, while for smoother data such as the aggregated active power in Scenarios 6 and 7 the correlation coef-
ficient is always positive. A short resume of all seven scenarios is depicted in Fig. 7
where the red arrows indicate the variations in multistep prediction. It can be observed that as the number of steps predicted into the future is increasing,
the performance of ANN is decreasing in comparison with CRBM and FCRBM.
This observation is well exemplified in the case of Scenarios 3 and 5, where the
prediction is made on 1440 and 672 future steps, respectively, and the error for
ANN is approximately double than the error of CRBM or FCRBM. In almost all the scenarios, the error given by SVM is a little bigger than CRBM or FCRBM, but
smaller than the one of ANN or RNN. Also, we have observed that RNN, even it
is very fast in terms of training time, it is not stable and its performance its highly dependent on the number of reservoirs chosen and the type of the data.
The analysis performed showed that FCRBM is a powerful method which out-
performed the state-of-the art prediction methods such as ANNs, SVMs, RNNs, and CRBMs. It is worth mentioning that as the prediction horizon is increasing,
FCRBMs and CRBMs seem to be more robust and their prediction error is typ-
ically half that of the ANN. All methods presented showed comparable predic- tion time, in the order of few hundred milliseconds, and are therefore suitable
for near real-time exploitation in applications such as home and building auto- mation systems. From all the experiments, it can be observed that all methods
perform better when predicting the aggregated active power consumption, than
predicting the demand of intermittent appliances (e.g., electric water heater) recorded with the three submeterings.
1393 Unsupervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
3 Unsupervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
There are many methods for supervised energy prediction. Although they
remain at the forefront of academic and applied research, all these methods require labeled data able to faithfully reproduce the energy consumption of
buildings. In the remaining of this chapter we refer to the labeled data as to
the historical (known) data of the analyzed building. Usually the lack of histor- ical data can be replaced by simulated data. Still, both, historical and simulated
data, are employed in these forecasting methods in a nonadaptable way with-
out considering the future events or changes which can occur in the smart grid.
A stronger motivation for this section is given by the not too well exploited fact
that sometimes there are not historically data consumption available for a par-
ticular building. From the machine learning perspective this is a typical unsu- pervised learning problem. One of the most used methods of unsupervised
learning, RL, was introduced in power system area to solve stochastic optimal
control problems [30]. RL methods are used in a wide range of applications, such as system control [31], playing games, or more recently in transfer learning
[4, 30]. The advantage of the combination of RL and transfer learning
approaches is straightforward. Hence, we want to transfer knowledge from a global to a local perspective to encode the uncertainty of the building
energy demand.
Owing to the curse of dimensionality, these methods fail in high dimensions.
More recently, there has been a revival of interest in combining deep learning
with RL. Therein, RBMs were proven to provide a value function estimation [32] or a policy estimation [33]. More than that, Mnih et al. [3] combined
successfully DNNs and Q-learning to create a deep Q-network which success-
fully learned control policies in a range of different environments. For a more general view, a short bibliometric analysis of the collections of publications
related with the Transfer Learning and RL concepts is performed further using
specialized queries on Scopus. The overall count obtained for Transfer Learn- ing is 189,524 publications and 113,263 for RL, indexed by Scopus on 26 July
2016. In Fig. 8 three disjoint sets are highlighted by zooming over the
last decade: (i) Q-learning with 3174 publications, (ii) SARSA with 332 publications, and (iii) deep reinforcement learning which counts for 207
publications.
In Mocanu et al. [34], we comprehensively explore and extend two RL methods
to predict the energy consumption at the building level using unlabeled histor-
ical data, namely state-action-reward-state-action (SARSA) [35] and Q-learning [36]. Due to the fact that in the original form both methods cannot handle well
continuous state space, this work contributes theoretically to extend them by
incorporating a DBN [1] for continuous states estimation and automatically
30,000
25,000
20,000
15,000
N u m
b e r
o f p u b lic
a tio
n s
10,000
5000
0 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970
Time (years)
1980
400
Deep RL Q-learning SARSA RL Transfer learning
300
200
100
0 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015
1990 2000 2010
FIG. 8
The number of Scopus-indexed publications with focus on the transfer learning and reinforcement learning
concepts between 1909 and 2015.
140 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
features extraction in an unified framework. Our proposed RL methods are
appropriate when we do not have historical or simulated data, but we want
to estimate the impact of changes in smart grid, such as the appearance of a building or several buildings in a certain area, or more commonly, a change
in energy consumption due to building renovation. In this section, we have
shown the applicability and efficiency of our proposed method in three differ- ent situations:
• In the case of a new type of building being connected with the smart grid, thus transferring knowledge from a commercial building to a
residential building.
• In the case of a renovated building, thus transferring knowledge from a nonelectric heat building to a building with electric heating.
• Additionally, we propose experiments to highlight the importance of
external factors for the estimation of building energy consumption, such as price information. In respect with this the transfer learning is
applied, from a building under a static tariff to a building with a
time-of-use tariff.
According to our knowledge, this is the first time when the energy prediction is performed without using any information about that building, such as histor-
ical data, energy price, physical parameters of the building, meteorological con-
dition, or information about the user behavior.
3.1 Problem Formulation
We propose a method to solve the unsupervised energy prediction problem
with cross-building transfer by using machine learning time-series prediction
Reinforcement Learning
Action
Reward Agent
Continuous states
Continuous state estimation
Approximated reinforcement learning
Model approximation Value approximation Policy approximation
Building model
Transfer learning
Deep belief network
FIG. 9
The unsupervised learning explores and extends reinforcement and transfer learning setup, by including a
deep belief network for continuous states estimation.
1413 Unsupervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
techniques. In the most general statement, the proposed Reinforcement and
Transfer Learning setup is depicted in Fig. 9. Given the unevenly distributed
building energy values during time, firstly, a special attention is given to the question: How to estimate a continuous state space? The idea is to find a lower
dimensional representation of the energy consumption data that preserves
the pairwise distances as well as possible.
More formally, the energy prediction using unlabeled data problem presented
in this section is divided into three different subproblems, namely:
1. Continuous state estimation problem:
Given a dataset, D : ℝ ! S find a confined space state representation S1.
2. RL problem:
Given a building model M1 ¼ S1, A1, T � �, �ð Þ, R1h i, find an optimal policy, π1∗.
3. Transfer learning problem:
Given a model, M1 ¼ S1, A1, T � �, �ð Þ, R1h i, a reasonable π1∗ and M2 ¼ S2, A2, T � �, �ð Þ, R2h i, find a good π2∗.
The proposed solution is presented in Section 3.3, where a new method to esti-
mate continuous states in RL using DBN is detailed. Further this state estima- tion method is integrated in SARSA and Q-learning algorithms in order to
improve the prediction accuracy.
142 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
3.2 Reinforcement Learning
RL [37] is a field of machine learning inspired by psychology, which studies how artificial agents can perform actions in an environment to achieve a spe-
cific goal. Practically, the agent has to control a dynamic system by choosing
actions in a sequential fashion. The dynamic system, known also as the envi- ronment, is characterized by states, its dynamics, and a function that describes
the state’s evolution given the actions chosen by the agent. After it executes an
action, the agent moves to a new state, where it receives a reward (scalar value) which informs it how far it is from the goal (the final state). To achieve the goal,
the agent has to learn a strategy to select actions, dubbed policy in the literature,
in such a way that the expected sum of the rewards is maximized over time. Besides that, a state of the system captures all the information required to pre-
dict the evolution of the system in the next state, given an agent action. Also, it is
assumed that the agent could perceive the state of the environment without error, and it could make its current decision based on this information.
There are two different categories of RL algorithms, (i) Online RL which are
interaction-based algorithms, such as Q-learning [36], SARSA [35], or Policy Gra- dient, and (ii) Offline RL, like Least-Square Policy Iteration or fitted Q-iteration.
For a more comprehensive discussion of RL algorithms we refer to Busoniu et al. [38]. In the remaining of this chapter we will refer just to online RL.
3.2.1 Markov Decision Process An RL problem can be formalized using Markov decision process (MDPs). MDPs are defined by a 4-tuple S, A, T � �, �ð Þ, R� �, �ð Þh i, where S is a set of states, 8s 2 S, A is a set of actions, 8a 2 A, T : S �A�S ! 0, 1½ � is the transition function given by the probability that by choosing action a in state s at time t the system will arrive to state s0 at time t + 1 such that pa(s,s
0 )¼p(st+1¼s
0 jst¼s,at¼a), and R : S �
A�S ! ℝ is the reward function, where Ra(s,s 0 ) is the immediate reward (or
expected immediate reward) received by the agent after it performs the transition to state s0 from state s. An important property in MDPs is the Markov property [39] which makes the assumption that the state transitions are dependent just
on the last state of the system, and are independent of any previous environment states or agent actions, i.e., p(st+1¼s
0 ,rt+1¼rjst,at) for all s0, r, st, and at.
The MDPs theory does not assume that S or A are finite, but the traditional algorithms make this assumption. In general, they can be solved by using linear
or dynamic programming. The interested reader is referred to Puterman [40] for
a more comprehensive discussion about MDPs. Furthermore, in the real world, the state transition probabilities T � �; �ð Þ and the rewards R�(�;�) are unknown, and the state space S or the action space A might be continuous. Thus, RL represents a normal extension and generalization over MDPs for such situa- tions, where the tasks are too large or too ill defined, and cannot be solved using
optimal control theory [35].
1433 Unsupervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
3.2.2 Q-Learning First, the Q-learning algorithm [36] is recommended like a standard solution in
RL where the rules are often stochastic. This algorithm therefore has a function which calculates the Quality of a state-action combination, defined by
S �A ! ℝ. Before learning has started, Q matrix returns an initial value. Then, each time the agent selects an action, and observes a reward and a new state that both may depend on the previous state and the selected action. The action-
value function of a fixed policy π with the value function Vπ : S ! ℝ is
Qπ s, að Þ ¼ r s, að Þ + γ X s0
p s0j s, að ÞVπ s0ð Þ, 8s 2 S,a 2 A (28)
The value of state-action pairs, Qπ(s,a), represent the expected outcome when
one agent is starting from s, executing a and then following the policy π after- ward, such that Vπ(x)¼Qπ(x,π(x)), with their corresponding Bellman equation
Q∗ s, að Þ ¼ r s, að Þ + γ X s0
p s0j s, að Þ maxQ∗ s, bð Þ b
(29)
where the discount factor γ 2[0,1] trades off the importance of rewards and b¼max(a). Thus, the optimal value is obtained for 8s2S, V∗ sð Þ ¼ maxa Q∗ s, að Þ, and π∗ sð Þ ¼ arg maxa Q∗ s, að Þ. The value of state-action pairs is given by the same formal expectation value, π, of an expected total return rt such that Q s, að Þ ¼ π rtj st ¼ s, at ¼ að Þ. The off-policy Q-learning algorithm has the update rule defined by
Qt + 1 st, atð Þ ¼ Qt st, atð Þ + αt rt + 1 + γmaxQt st + 1, að Þ�Qt st, atð Þ½ � (30)
where rt+1 is the reward observed after performing at in st, and where αt(s,a), with all α2[0,1], is the learning rate which may be the same for all pairs.
Q-learning algorithm has problems with big numbers of continuous states and discrete actions. Usually, it needs function approximations, e.g., neural net-
works, to associate triplets like state, action, and Q-value. Exploration of one
MDP can be done under Markov assumption, to take into account just current state and action, but because in the real world we have partially observable
MDPs (POMDP), we may have better results if an arbitrary k number of history
states and actions (St�k,at�k, …,St�1,at�1) will be considerate [41] to clearly identify a triplet St, At, Qth i at time t.
3.2.3 SARSA An interesting variation for Q-learning is the SARSA algorithm [35], which aims
at using Q-learning as part of a Policy Iteration mechanism. The major differ- ence between SARSA and Q-Learning is that the maximum reward for the next
state in SARSA is not necessarily used for updating the Q-values. Therefore, the
144 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
core of the SARSA algorithm is a simple value iteration update. The information
required for the update is a tuple (st,at,rt+1,st+1,at+1), and the update is defined by
Qt + 1 st, atð Þ ¼ Qt st, atð Þ + αt rt + 1 + γQt st + 1, at + 1ð Þ�Qt st, atð Þ½ � (31)
where rt+1 is the reward and αt(s,a) is the learning rate. In practice, Q-learning and SARSA are the same if we use a greedy policy (i.e., the agent chooses the best action always), but are different when the E-greedy policy is used, which favors more random exploration.
In traditional RL algorithms, only MDPs with finite states and actions are con- sidered. However, building energy consumption can take nearly arbitrary real
value resulting in a very large number of states in MDPs. Due to the fact that
building energy consumption can be seen as a time-series problem, a prior dis- cretization of the state space is not very useful. So, we try to find algorithms that
work well with large (or continuous) state spaces, as shown next.
3.3 States Estimation via DBNs
Deep Architectures [1] show very good results in different applications, such as to perform nonlinear dimensionality reduction [42], images recognition, video
sequences, or motion-capture data [43]. A comprehensive analysis on dimen-
sionality reduction and deep architectures can be referred to van der Maaten et al. [44]. Overall, DBN could be a way to naturally decompose the problem
into subproblems associated with different levels of abstraction.
3.3.1 Deep Belief Networks DBNs are composed of several RBMs stacked on top of each other [42]. An RBM
is a stochastic recurrent neural network that consists of a layer of visible units, v, and a layer of binary hidden units, h. The total energy of the joint configuration
of the visible and hidden units (v, h) is given by
E v, hð Þ ¼ � X i, j
vihjWij � X i
viai � X j
hjbj (32)
where i represents the indices of the visible layer, j those of the hidden layer, and wi,j denotes the weight connection between the ith visible and jth hidden
unit. Further, vi and hj denote the state of the ith visible and jth hidden unit,
respectively, and ai and bj represent the biases of the visible and hidden layers. The first term,
P i, j vihjWij represents the energy between the hidden and
visible units with their associated weights. The second, P
i viai represents the
energy in the visible layer, while the third term represents the energy in the hidden layer. The RBM defines a joint probability over the hidden and visible
layer p(v,h).
1453 Unsupervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
p v, hð Þ ¼ e�E v, hð Þ
Z (33)
where Z is the partition function, obtained by summing the energy of all pos-
sible (v,h) configurations, Z ¼ P
v,h e �E v, hð Þ. To determine the probability of a
data point represented by a state v, the marginal probability is used, summing
out the state of the hidden layer, such that p vð Þ ¼ P
h p v, hð Þ.
The above equation can be used for any given input to calculate the probability of either the visible or the hidden configuration to be activated. These values are
further used to perform inference in order to determine the conditional prob-
abilities in the model. To maximize the likelihood of the model, the gradient of the log-likelihood with respect to the weights must be calculated. The gradient
of the first term, after some algebraic manipulations, can be written as
∂log X h
exp �E v, hð Þð Þ !
∂Wij ¼ vi �p hj ¼ 1j v
� � (34)
However, computing the gradient of the second term is intractable. The infer-
ence of the hidden and visible layers in RBM can be done accordingly with the next formulas
p hj ¼ 1j v � �
¼ σ bj + X i
viWji
! (35)
p vi ¼ 1j hð Þ ¼ σ ai + X j
hjWji
! (36)
where σ(�) represents the sigmoid function. Moreover, to learn an RBM we can use the following learning rule which performs stochastic steepest ascent in the log probability of the training data [26]:
∂log p v, hð Þð Þ ∂Wij
¼ vihj � �
0 � vihj � �
∞ (37)
where h�i0 denotes the expectations for the data distribution (p0) and h�i∞ denotes the expectations under the model distribution.
Overall, a DBN [1] is given by an arbitrary number of RBMs stack on the top of each other. This yields a combination between a partially directed and partially
undirected graphical model. Therein, the joint distribution between visible
layer v (input vector) and the l hidden layers hk is defined as follows:
p v, h1, …, hk � �
¼ Yl�2 k¼0
P hkj hk + 1 � �
P hl�1, hl � �
(38)
RBM
h3(l )
h2(k)
h1( j)
v(i )
Wij
FIG. 10
A general deep belief network structure with three hidden layers. The top two layers have undirected
connections and form an associative memory.
146 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
where P(hkjhk+1) is a conditional distribution for the visible units conditioned l�1 l
on the hidden units of the RBM at level k, and P(h ,h ) is the visible-hidden
joint distribution in the top-level RBM. An example of a DBN with 3 hidden
layers (i.e., h1( j), h2( j), and h3( j)) is depicted in Fig. 10. The top-level RBM in a DBN acts as a complementary prior from the bottom level directed sigmoid
likelihood function. A DBN can be trained in a greedy unsupervised way, by
training separately each RBM from it, in a bottom to top fashion, and using the hidden layer as an input layer for the next RBM [45]. Furthermore, the
DBN can be used to project our initial states acquired from the environment
to another state space with binary values, by fixing the initial states in the bot- tom layer of the model, and inferring the top hidden layer from them. In the
end, the top hidden layer can be directly incorporated into the SARSA or
Q-learning algorithms.
Now that we have considered the problem of state estimation and we incorpo-
rated all three subproblems in a unified approach we look into the experimen- tal validation.
3.4 Numerical Results
Dataset characteristics: The proposed solution is experimentally evaluated using
a dataset recorded over 7 years, more exactly between 6 January 2007 and 31 January 2014. The load profiles, including different residential and commer-
cial buildings, are made on-line available by Baltimore Gas and Electric Com-
pany. For every type of building analyzed the available historical load data in
Table 3 Building Types in Datasets
R Residential (Nonelectric Heat)
Residential R(ToU) Residential time-of-use (nonelectric heat)
RH Residential (electric heat)
RH(ToU) Residential time-of-use (electric heat)
Commercial G General Service—Commercial, Industrial & Lighting (<60 kW)
1473 Unsupervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
kWh represents an average building profile per hour. Overall, there are five dif- ferent building profiles, as presented in Table 3.
For a more comprehensive view of the datasets used in this chapter we have
shown in Fig. 11A the hourly evolution of the electrical energy consumption for a General Service (G) dataset, including Commercial, Industrial & Lighting,
and a residential with nonelectric heat (R) building over different time hori-
zons. Moreover, some general characteristics for the entire dataset are graphi- cally depicted in Fig. 11B. In all experiments the data was separated into the
training and testing datasets. More precisely, the data collected from 1 June
2007 until 1 January 2013 (2041 days) was used in the learning phase and the remaining data, between January 2013 and 31 January 2014 (396 days)
was used to evaluate the performance of the methods. The metrics used to
assess the quality of the different buildings energy consumption prediction are described further.
Metrics for prediction assessment: As we mention earlier, the goal is to achieve good generalization by making accurate prediction for new building energy
consumption data. Firstly, some quantitative insights into the dependence of
the generalization performance of our approach are evaluated using the
root-mean-square error defined by RMSE ¼ ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 1 N
PN i¼1 vi � v̂ið Þ
2 q
, where N repre-
sents the number of multisteps prediction within a specified time horizon, vi represents the real values for the time step i, and v̂i represents the model esti-
mated value at the same time step. Then, by using the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (R), insights are given on the degree of linear depen-
dence between the real value and the predicted value. Hence
R u, vð Þ ¼ u�μuð Þ v�μvð Þ½ � σuσv
, where �½ � is the expected value operator with standard deviations σu and σv. The correlation coefficient may take on any value within the range [�1, 1]. The sign of the correlation coefficient defines the direction of the relationship, either positive or negative. Finally, we perform the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test [46] in order to gain insights on statistical signifi-
cance of our results. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test has the advantage of making
no assumption about the distribution of data. This elaborate statistical test is not a typical metric used in the analysis of the prediction accuracy, but is
imposed by the fact that the learning and the testing procedure is made using
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0
5 All data
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 0
5
1 2 3 4 0
5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0
5
Time (A)
(B)
B u
ild in
g e
n e
rg y
co n
su m
p tio
n (
kW h
)
G dataset R dataset First week
First month
First year
R RH R (ToU) RH (ToU) G
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
B u
ild in
g e
n e
rg y
co n
su m
p tio
n (
kW h
)
Mean (m) 3.042.191.761.20 0.69 0.89
1.97
0.87Std.dev.(æ) 0.45 0.79
FIG. 11
(A) Electrical energy consumption for a Commercial, Industrial & Lighting (G) dataset and for a residential
building with nonelectric heat (R) building over different time horizons and (B) general characteristics of all
data sets: A box plot with the exact value for mean and standard deviation encoded in it.
148 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
Table 4 Summary of the Experiments
Notation Time Horizon Resolution
Scenario 1 S1 1 h 1 h average
Scenario 2 S2 1 day 1 h average
Scenario 3 S3 1 week 1 h average
Scenario 4 S4 1 month 1 h average
Scenario 5 S5 1 year 1 week average
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4 0
(A) (B) 10 20
Number of training epochs
30 40 50
R M
S E
v a lu
e
1.4
1.2
1.0
M e tr
ic s
fo r
p re
d ic
tio n a
ss e ss
m e n t
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0 0 5 10
Number of training epochs
15 20
RMSE value Correction coefficient (R) P-value
5 hidden neurons 10 hidden neurons 20 hidden neurons 50 hidden neurons 100 hidden neurons
FIG. 12
(A) The RMSE values observed for different RBM configurations in the DBN architecture, with varying
number of hidden neurons, as a function of training epochs. (B) Performance metrics for the chosen
RBM configuration with 10 hidden neurons.
1493 Unsupervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
different building types. Hence, exceeding the statistical significance level, P < .05, would be expected and will validate the different probability distribu-
tion function from where this data is provided.
Empirical Results: To assess the performance of our extended reinforcement and
transfer learning approaches presented in Section 3.3, we have designed five
different scenarios. These are selected to cover various multistep prediction at different resolution, and are summarized in Table 4. Further on, before to
go into the deep analyses of the numerical results, firstly we present some
details of the implementation.
Implementations details: The implementation has been done in two parts. Firstly,
a DBN is implemented, and secondly the RL algorithms use the DBN in their implementations for continuous states estimation, as it is shown next.
Continuous states estimations using DBN: We implemented the DBN in
MATLAB from scratch using the mathematical details described in Section 3.3. In order to obtain a good prediction we investigate carefully the
choice of the optimal number of hidden units in our DBN configuration with
respect to the RMSE evolution, see Fig. 12.
150 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
Thus, the number of hidden neurons was set to 10 and the learning rate
was 10�3. The momentum was set to 0.5 and the weight decay to 0.0002. We trained the model for 20 epochs, but as it can be seen in Fig. 12B, the model
converged after approximately 4 epochs. More details about the optimal choice
of the parameters can be found in Hinton [27].
SARSA and Q-learning: We implemented the SARSA and Q-learning in
MATLAB using the mathematical details described in Section 3.2. In both cases the learning rate was set to 0.4 and the discount factor was set to. Both
parameters have a direct influence on the performance of the both algorithms.
The choice of these parameters was made after a thorough examination of the RMSE outcome, as is shown for example in Fig. 13. Overall, the learning rate
determines to what extent the newly acquired information will override the
old information and the discount factor determines the importance of future rewards, for example γ ¼0 will make the agent “opportunistic” by only consid- ering current rewards, while a discount factor approaching 1 will make it strive for a long-term high reward.
3.4.1 Commercial to Residential Transfer In this set of experiments, we use Commercial, Industrial & Lighting data to
train the DBN model. Furthermore, we use the trained DBN model to predict four different types of unseen residential building consumption, such as resi-
dential with electric heat and without electric heat, and residential electric con- sumption with ToU pricing, as it is shown in Table 5 and Fig. 14. The analysis of
the different types of residential buildings advances the insight on the general-
ization capabilities of our proposed method and studies its robustness by test- ing the behavior on different probability distributions (see Fig. 11).
R M
S E
v a lu
e
3 Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3 Scenario 4
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
Learning rate (a)
0.7 0.8 0.9 1
2
1
0
FIG. 13
Analyses of RMSE values obtained from different α values in exploration step, for different scenarios.
This involves the prediction of G dataset [Commercial, Industrial & Lighting consumption, General
Service (<60 kW)].
Table 5 Using Commercial, General Service (G) (<60 kW) Dataset to Predict Residential Energy Consumption, Such as R, R(ToU), RH and RH(ToU) Values Using SARSA, Q-Learning, SARSA With DBN Extension and Q-Learning With DBN Extension
Methods G R R(ToU) RH RH(ToU)
Scenario 1 SARSA 0.18 0.02 0.10 0.36 0.42
Q-learning 0.22 0.02 0.04 0.34 0.34
SARSA and DBN 0.04 0.02 0.06 0.04 0.04
Q-learning and DBN 0.01 0.03 0.09 0.04 0.02
Scenario 2 SARSA 0.65 0.75 0.47 1.23 1.20
Q-learning 1.09 0.98 0.40 1.28 1.55
SARSA and DBN 0.38 0.37 0.37 0.46 0.47
Q-learning and DBN 0.33 0.37 0.29 0.41 0.66
Scenario 3 SARSA 1.27 1.73 1.36 1.59 1.33
Q-learning 1.39 1.10 0.83 1.47 1.61
SARSA and DBN 0.69 1.31 0.55 1.33 1.18
Q-learning and DBN 0.62 0.98 0.58 1.26 1.30
Scenario 4 SARSA 1.55 3.70 2.39 2.05 1.89
Q-learning 1.41 1.24 1.14 1.67 1.71
SARSA and DBN 1.14 1.45 1.17 1.33 1.21
Q-learning and DBN 0.98 1.40 0.87 1.52 1.55
Scenario 5 SARSA 1.01 2.61 2.04 2.16 1.95
Q-learning 0.72 2.28 1.81 1.83 1.59
SARSA and DBN 0.05 0.08 0.10 0.11 0.24
Q-learning and DBN 0.03 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.03
1513 Unsupervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
3.4.2 Residential to Residential Transfer During these experiments we learn and transfer one type of residential building
energy demand profile to another type of residential building with different
characteristics. More exactly, we used to train the learning algorithm (i) a res- idential building profile without electric heat (R), and (ii) a residential building
with electric heat (RH). The prediction results of these two building models can
be seen in Table 6.
In Tables 5 and 6, the RMSE values show a good agreement between the real
values and the model estimated values. In addition, the confidence in our
results is formally determined not just by the RMSE values, but also by the cor- relation coefficient and the number of steps predicted into the future. For exam-
ple, if there is just one step ahead, such as in Scenario 1, then the Pearson
correlation coefficient needs to be very close to 1 or �1 in order to consider it statistically significant. However, in the case of Scenarios 3 and 4, where
the prediction is made on 168 and 672 future steps, a coefficient close to
0 can still be considered highly significant. More discussions about the
1
G (SARSA)
G (SARSA+DBN) R (SARSA) R (SARSA+DBN) R ToU (SARSA) R ToU (SARSA+DBN) RH (SARSA) RH (SARSA+DBN) RH ToU (SARSA) RH ToU (SARSA+DBN)
2 3 Scenario
R M
S E
v a lu
e
4 5 0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
FIG. 14
Overview of errors obtained, where (C) using G dataset we predict R, R(ToU), RH, and RH(ToU) values,
(A) using R we predict RH, and (B) using R(ToU) we predict the RH(ToU). Four methods are used:
SARSA, Q-learning, SARSA with DBN extension, and Q-learning with DBN extension.
152 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
robustness of the correlation coefficient can be found in Devlin et al. [47]. Still,
the inaccuracy was reflected in a negative correlation coefficient in 24% of the
experiments when we used the simple form of the SARSA and Q-learning methods. By contrast, our two improved approaches, SARSA with DBN exten-
sion and Q-learning with DBN extension, show a negative correlation in just 4% of the cases. Overall, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test in most cases confirms
that the data do indeed come from different distributions, which is represented
with gray color in Table 6. This is partially due to the unique characteristics of this dataset, given by the presence of a highly nonlinear profile shape and large
outlier values, as seen in Fig. 11. All of these observations give a strong argu-
ment for employing a more comprehensive examination of the distributions used in the transfer learning. Nevertheless, the results presented in Tables 5
and 6 demonstrate that the energy prediction accuracies in terms of RMSE sig-
nificantly improve in 91.42% of the cases after using a DBN for automatically computing high-level features from the unlabeled data, as compared to the sit-
uation when the counterpart RL methods are used without any DBN extension.
Notably, the proposed approach is also suitable when we have access to histor- ical data. In the scope of this argument, the result obtained in the first column
of Table 5 is expected to be equivalent with the results obtained with any super-
vised learning methods, such as ANN or SVM. Nevertheless, the RMSE accuracy
Table 6 (A) Prediction of Residential Building With Electric Heat Consumption Using Data Collected From a Residential With Nonelectric Heat Building. (B) Prediction of Residential Building Consumption With Electric Heat Using Data Collected From a Residential With Nonelectric Heat Building, Both With ToU Pricing
Methods A B
RMSE R RMSE R
S1 SARSA 0.42 0.88 0.50 0.83
Q-learning 0.44 0.87 0.16 0.99
SARSA with DBN 0.42 0.88 0.28 0.94
Q-learning with DBN 0.03 0.99 0.24 0.99
S2 SARSA 2.15 �0.18 1.69 0.33 Q-learning 1.93 �0.10 0.91 0.83 SARSA with DBN 1.25 0.61 1.42 0.55
Q-learning with DBN 0.50 0.64 1.18 0.77
S3 SARSA 2.63 �0.27 2.69 �0.11 Q-learning 2.57 �0.18 1.65 0.17 SARSA with DBN 2.67 0.13 1.98 0.27
Q-learning with DBN 0.69 0.09 1.55 0.21
S4 SARSA 2.23 0.04 2.45 �0.01 Q-learning 2.14 0.11 1.62 0.17
SARSA with DBN 1.97 �0.09 2.38 0.24 Q-learning with DBN 0.71 �0.10 1.60 0.28
S5 SARSA 0.74 0.62 0.67 0.19
Q-learning 0.57 0.62 0.41 0.47
SARSA with DBN 0.03 0.43 0.03 0.34
Q-learning with DBN 0.02 0.51 0.02 0.42
1534 Conclusions
obtained using the Q-learning algorithm with the DBN extension for the long-
term forecasting of buildings energy consumption (Scenario 5) is >90% in all
the experiments than Q-learning without DBN extension. For example, in Table 6 the RMSE is 0.02 if we use Q-learning with DBN versus 0.57 for
Q-learning without DBN, yielding a 96.5% improved RMSE accuracy.
4 CONCLUSIONS
In this chapter, firstly, we present two deep learning methods for supervised energy prediction, namely CRBM and FCRBM. FCRBM has good generalization
capabilities and it can be used to accommodate large databases, while its exploi-
tation time in real-world settings is on the order of few milliseconds. On the one hand, the comparative results show that FCRBM outperforms the other
methods such as ANN, RNN, SVM, and on the other hand, they suggest that
154 CHAPTER 7: Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
by adding more information to FCRBM, its performance may be improved
further, leading to a more full automatic real-time control of electrical energy profiles in the smart grid context.
Secondary, in Section 3, a new paradigm for building energy prediction is intro- duced, which does not require historical data from the specific building under
scrutiny. In a unified approach, we can successfully learn a building model by
including a generalization of the state space domain, then we transfer it across other building. This contribution is twofold. First, we present a DBN for automat-
ically feature extraction and second, we extend two standard RL algorithms able
to perform knowledge transfer between domains (buildings models), namely SARSA algorithm and Q-learning algorithm by incorporating the states estimated
with the DBN. The novel proposed machine learning methods for energy predic-
tion are evaluated over different time horizons with different time resolutions using real data. Notably, it can be observed that as the prediction horizon is
increasing, SARSA and Q-learning extensions by including a DBN for states esti-
mation seem to be more robust and their prediction error is approximately 20 times lower than that of their unextended versions. The strength of this
method is given by the DBN generalization capabilities over the underlying state
space for a new building and the robustness to invariance in the state represen- tation. However, a forthcoming deep investigation can be done at different smart
grid levels in order to help the transition to the future energy system.
Nowadays, deep learning methods for power system data analysis are in an
incipient phase. Still, the power system transition toward the big data era
encourages the use of deep learning, as the most advanced solutions for large-scale applications. For example, the interested reader is referred to Mocanu
et al. [19] for a comparison between CRBM and HMMs for energy prediction,
and to Mocanu et al. [48] to see FCRBM capabilities in a price-responsive con- text. In Mocanu et al. [49, 50] deep learning methods are used to perform energy
disaggregation and building flexibility detection. Recently, Marino et al. [51]
propose the use of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks for building energy prediction, performing experiments on the same dataset as the one used
in Section 2. More details on deep learning for energy prediction can be found in
Ryu et al. [52] and in a recent review of Manic et al. [53].
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- Deep Learning for Power System Data Analysis
- Introduction
- From Neural Network Towards Deep Learning
- Deep Learning Methods
- Supervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
- Conditional Restricted Boltzmann Machine
- Inference in CRBM
- Learning for CRBM Using Contrastive Divergence
- Factored Conditional Restricted Boltzmann Machine
- Total Energy for FCRBM
- Inference in FCRBM
- Learning and Update Rules for FCRBMs
- Experiments and Results
- Unsupervised Energy Prediction Using Deep Learning
- Problem Formulation
- Reinforcement Learning
- Markov Decision Process
- Q-Learning
- SARSA
- States Estimation via DBNs
- Deep Belief Networks
- Numerical Results
- Commercial to Residential Transfer
- Residential to Residential Transfer
- Conclusions
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-8---Compressive-Sensing-for-Power-Sy_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-Po.pdf
CHAPTER 8
Compressive Sensing for Power System Data Analysis
Mohammad Babakmehr*, Mehrdad Majidi†, Marcelo G. Simoes* *Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, United States, †University of Nevada, Reno, NV,
United States
159
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Within this chapter, we will introduce the applications of a state-of-the-art theorem in signal proces-
sing and system identification, named as compressive sensing-sparse recovery (CS-SR), in smart power networks monitoring, data analysis, security, and reliability. The sparse nature of the electrical
power grids as well as electrical signals is exploited to introduce alternative mathematical formula-
tions to address some of the most famous system modeling problems in power engineering through a compressive signal processing or a sparse system identification framework. First, a short background
on CS-SR theorems and techniques is presented. Next, the state of the art in CS-SR applications in
smart grid technology is discussed, and finally, the following three data analyses and power network
control problems are specifically addressed in detail. The CS-SR techniques are exploited to propose novel methods for distribution system state estimation (DSSE), single and simultaneous fault location
in smart distribution and transmission networks, and partial discharge pattern recognition.
1 INTRODUCTION
During the last two decades, the frontier technologies of sensor networks and
data centers deeply affected the field of power engineering. A layer of informa- tion flows throughout the interconnected electrical power networks that trans-
fers the measurements of electrical parameters from the system equipment to
the decision-making hubs while feedback the monitoring signals from opera- tional rooms to the controllers, within an almost online manner [1]. Besides
various inherent advantages in such an online monitoring and recording
framework, the huge amount of data arriving at each sample of time (to the operational and control rooms) would result in new technical and analysis
issues for system operators (also known as the era of big data). Thus, despite
the high resolution of the monitoring picture we extract from this comprehen- sive dataset a variety of challenges also arise in parallel including data storage,
time cost, mathematical complexity, and so on [2].
To deal with the corresponding challenges associated with the big data analysis,
various approaches have been developed in the literature. Beyond the state of
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00008-5
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
160 CHAPTER 8: Compressive Sensing for Power System Data Analysis
the art in the era of big data, the compressive sensing-sparse recovery (CS-SR)
techniques have found enormous interest. The fundamental idea of CS-SR emerges from the fact that, if a signal of interest has an alternative representa-
tion (in some mathematical domain), with a small number of degrees of free-
dom, one should be able to capture its overall behavior using a much smaller number of measurements rather than its original time domain representation
[3,4]. For example, based on the Shannon sampling theorem, to correctly mea-
sure the inherent characteristics of a typical 60 Hz sinusoidal signal (including a possible set of harmonics), the sampling frequency should exceed at least two
times of the bandwidth of the signal (resulting in a dense time vector). How-
ever, the corresponding Fourier representation of such a signal would at most have a couple of nonzero coefficients within the corresponding frequency spec-
trum (resulting in a sparse frequency vector). During last decade, such a sparse
behavioral pattern (which appears in most of the natural and industrial signals) motivated many researchers to investigate new mathematical tools and theo-
rems to develop an alternative sensing approach that captures a small subset of measurements from a signal of interest, compressive sensing (roughly in the
order of the sparsity level1 of the signal), and still can recover its original
behavior, sparse recovery.
Nevertheless, the sparse recovery techniques have been farther studied as an
independent mathematical approach to address the analysis and time complex-
ity of any practical problem with an inherent sparsity in its corresponding for- mulation [5]. Beyond this set of problems, those associated with a kind of
graph model-based analysis are notable. Despite outward complexity, most
of the corresponding monitoring problems in power networks do have a sparse structure in some sense. For example, as it has been suggested in Ref. [6], usu-
ally, the number of simultaneous line outages happening in a power network
(PN) is a small subset of total number of transmission lines. Thus, one may assign a sparse outage vector recovery problem to identify the location of damaged
lines. Moreover, due to local connectivity pattern in electrical networks, within
a PN, the average connection degree2 of a typical electrical bus is a small num- ber; this fact results in a sparse corresponding graph representation for a PN. On
the other hand, one may easily observe that most of the power signals such as
voltages and currents are lying over a sparse representation in other mathemat- ical domains such as Fourier domain, where most of the Fourier coefficients are
usually very small or zero while only a small portion of the coefficients are sig-
nificantly larger than the others. This inherent sparsity has been exploited as a
1A sparse signal x2ℝN is usually defined as a vector with most of its elements equal to zero except a small portion, K, of them, with K≪N. K is also referred to the sparsity level of the signal. 2In this work, connection-degree is referred to the total number of neighbor buses directly connected to an
electrical bus.
1612 Mathematical Modeling Of a Compressive Sensing-Sparse Recovery Problem
progressive fact in a variety of related signal processing problems, such as partial
discharge (PD) pattern recognition [7,8], power quality event analysis, and classification [9].
In the rest of this chapter, we will first give a short introduction to CS-SR definitions, techniques, and theorems (Section 2). Next, we present a general
overview on the state of the art in the applications of CS-SR in the field of power
engineering (Section 3). Finally, we would investigate, by details, the following CS-SR-based approaches to address three of the monitoring issues in power
systems: distribution system state estimation (DSSE), single and simultaneous
fault location in smart distribution networks, and PD pattern recognition.
2 MATHEMATICAL MODELING OF A COMPRESSIVE SENSING-SPARSE RECOVERY PROBLEM
CS-SR is a new paradigm in signal processing that tries to introduce new alter- native data acquisition protocols to reduce the size of the required storage unit,
time cost, and complexity in the subordinate analysis. In the next two following
sections, we briefly describe the fundamentals of CS-SR with an emphasis on concepts which are used throughout the rest of this chapter.
2.1 Compressive Sensing
Roughly speaking, there is a simple question that emerged the theory of com- pressive sensing: “if a signal of interest has small degrees of freedom why
should we record too many samples to capture its corresponding behavior?”
For example, a sinusoidal signal can be defined as Asin(2πft+φ), with three characteristic parameters including A,f,and φ. However, we would need a sam- pling frequency as high as at least two times the bandwidth of the signal to
avoid the aliasing effect [10]. The number of recorded samples under such a sampling frequency, namely N (also referred to the original domain dimen-
sionality of the signal), is usually much bigger than the number of representa-
tive parameters (also interpreted as the real dimensionality of the signal). The theorem of compressive sensing is then trying to develop a superseded measur-
ing framework to capture a much smaller number of measurements, namely M
(which changes in the order of K and M≪N), while still be able to reveal the original behavior of the signal or recover its original structure using this partial
information.
Definition 1—Sparse signal. A signal x2ℝN is said to be sparse if most of its elements are equal to zero except a small number, K, where K≪N.
Definition 2—Compressible signal. A signal x2ℝN is said to be compressible if most of its elements are close to zero except a small number, K,
where K≪N.
162 CHAPTER 8: Compressive Sensing for Power System Data Analysis
Theorem 1 [11]. Consider a signal x2ℝN is K-sparse or has a K-sparse representation in some domain (x¼Dα, D2ℝN�N,α2ℝN and K-sparse); one can recover the cor- rect structure of x (alternatively α) from a set of measurements y¼Ax (or y¼ADα), y2ℝM, A2ℝM�N and M≪N, if the sensing protocol A (or in general AD) satisfies a set of conditions widely known as sparse recovery guarantee conditions and with a number of measurements that scale like Klog(N/K).3
2.2 Sparse Recovery Problem
In this part, we investigate the definition of a sparse recovery problem in addi-
tion to the essentials and corresponding theorems (please also refer to Refs.
[3,12] and references therein for more details). Definition 3—Coherence. The coherence of a matrix A2ℝM�N with normal- ized columns a1, … ,aN is defined as follows:
μA ¼ max ai, aj � �
for i, j ¼ 1 : N and i 6¼ j (1)
Definition 4—Restricted isometry property. The matrix A2ℝM�N is said to satisfy the restricted isometry property of the order K with isometry constant δKE(0,1) if the following inequality holds for all the K-sparse vectors x2ℝN:
1�δKð Þ xk k22 � Axk k22 � 1�δKð Þ xk k22 (2)
Theorem 2 [13]. Consider x2ℝN to be a K-sparse signal and a set of measurements y¼Ax2ℝM. If A satisfies the RIP condition of the order 2K with some isometry con- stant δ2K<1, or alternatively if μA <
1 2K�1, then the solution.
x̂ ¼ argmin �x
�xk k0 s:t:y ¼ A�x (3)
is the unique solution to y ¼ Ax̂ having sparsity level K or less, where kxk0 indi- cates the number of nonzero coefficients in x or alternatively its cardinality.
Unfortunately, this problem is known to be mathematically NP-hard [13]. For-
tunately, the following relaxed version of such a problem has been introduced to address the corresponding time complexity issue:
x̂ ¼ argmin �x
�xk k1 s:t:y ¼ A�x (4)
The l1-nrom is also a convex function in x and tends to have a small value for
sparse signals.
3For ease of notation we consider the sensing protocol matrix to be a single matrix A and the K-sparse
vector to be x, one may refer to Refs. [3,12] for detail definitions and concepts related to alternative sparse
representation in the other domains, Dα, and the corresponding definition and concepts such as mutual
coherence of two matrices A and D.
ALGORITHM 1 ORTHOGONAL MATCHING PURSUIT (OMP) require: matrix A, measurements y , stopping criterion
initialize: r0¼y,x0¼0,l¼0,SUP0¼∅ repeat
1.match: hl¼ATrl 2.identify support indicator:
supl¼{argmaxjjhl(j)j} 3.update the support:
SUPl+1¼SUPl[supl 4.update signal estimate:
xl+1¼argminz:SUP(z)�SUPl+1ky�Azk2 rl+1¼y�Axl+1, l¼l+1
Until stopping criterion met
output: x̂ ¼ xl
1632 Mathematical Modeling Of a Compressive Sensing-Sparse Recovery Problem
Theorem 3 [13]. Consider x2ℝN to be a K-sparse signal and a set of measurements y¼Ax2ℝM. If A satisfies the RIP condition of the order 2K with some isometry con- stant δ2K<0.4651, or alternatively μA <
1 2K�1, then the solution x̂ to Eq. (4) correctly
returns the K-sparse solution to y ¼ Ax̂. This problem is widely known as Basis Pursuit. Theorem 4 [13]. Consider x to be any vector ℝN and a set of noisy measurements y¼Ax+ε2ℝM. If A satisfies the RIP condition of the order 2K with some isometry constant δ2K<0.4651, then the solution x̂ to.
x̂ ¼ argmin �x
�xk k1 s:t: y�A�xk k2 � η (5)
with η�kεk2 obeys:
x� x̂k k2 � C1 x�xKk k1ffiffiffiffi
K p + C2η
where xK is said to be the nearest K-sparse signal to x and C1 and C2 are two
constants dependent on δ2K. This problem is widely known as the basic pursuit de-noising (BPDN).
Besides the usual convex optimization-based approaches to solve the BP or BPDN, a set of alternative greedy methods have been developed to find the cor-
rect solution x. Rather than searching among possible candidate solutions for
Eqs. (4), (5), greedy methods try to directly reconstruct a sparse solution. A famous and well-known greedy method is the orthogonal matching pursuit
(OMP) [14], which has been detailed in Algorithm 1. Roughly speaking, this
method attempts to find the true support of the signal x (position of nonzero coefficients) within a stepwise correlation minimization procedure.
164 CHAPTER 8: Compressive Sensing for Power System Data Analysis
3 APPLICATIONS OF CS-SR TECHNIQUES IN SMART GRIDS
During last couple of years, CS-SR techniques started penetrating the field
of power engineering. Nowadays, a variety of applications have been intro-
duced for CS-SR within the smart power grids technology (SG) [15–28]. Although SGs are usually forming a huge interconnected and complex system
there is an inherent sparsity in both the structure and data format within these complex networks. For instance, consider a PN as graph G(SN,SE), con-
sisting of a set of N nodes SN¼{1, …,N}, where each node i represents an arbitrary bus of the SG, and a set of L edges or transmission lines SE¼{li,j:i, jESN}, which connect certain nodes and form the general structure or topol- ogy of the grid. Considering a variety of standard PN models, it can be
observed that the regular maximum connectivity level of an electrical bus in a grid is typically <5%–10%, especially in case of large-scale PNs [29]. As suggested in Ref. [30], the same fact can be observed in case of distribution
networks as well. This sparsity in structure has been used in Refs. [5,15], to introduce an alternative compressive sensing-based SG topology
identification.
The sparse recovery-based power line outage identification has been first addressed in Ref. [6] and further developed in Ref. [16]. The basic idea comes
from the fact that the number of simultaneous outages happening within a
power grid would be a small portion of the total number of the transmission lines. Incorporating the linear DC power flow model [17], p¼BθERN, into some linear algebraic matrices properties a failure event has been modeled
(with a set of damaged lines ζout) in terms of a set of linear systems of equa- tions termed as power outage identification-sparse recovery problem (POI-
SRP) such that within the POI-SRP formulation we have y¼Ax+n, where yERN is termed the measurement vector and the matrix AERN�L is termed the sensing matrix. It has been shown that the resulting vector xERL can be considered as a sparse vector with most of its elements equal to zero except on the
corresponding Lout outage positions. The resulting Sparse Outage Vector
(SOV) follows the following mathematical format: x ¼ xl if l 2ζout 0 otherwise
� � .
Clearly, recovering such an SOV, x, one can easily obtain the outage lines
index set ζout by looking at the nonzero positions. In order to address the inherent challenges from the sparse recovery perspective a couple of general-
izations have been introduced in Refs. [16,18], such as Binary-POI-SRP and
Structured-POI-SRP.
Moreover CS-SR has found application in other SG monitoring and control
issues, such as attack recognition [19], communicational protocols [20,21],
and power signals processing [7–9]. CS-SR techniques have been also exploited
1654 Sparse Recovery-Based Dsse In Smart Grid
to propose novel methods for single and simultaneous fault location in smart
distribution and transmission networks [22–24], DSSE [25,26], and smart grid dynamic behavior modeling [27]. Also, an alternative sparse-based formula-
tion has been developed in Ref. [28] to address the power-flow modeling
problem.
Within the rest of this chapter we will take a deeper look at the CS-SR-based
frameworks which have been developed to address the following three distinct monitoring issues in the distribution level systems in smart grids:
(1) DSSE in smart grid [25,26]. (2) Fault location in smart grids [22–24]. (3) PD pattern recognition [7,8].
4 SPARSE RECOVERY-BASED DSSE IN SMART GRID
The voltage profiles along the distribution networks show that voltage differ-
ences between two buses of each line segment are so small and almost negligi- ble compared with the voltage in the beginning of the distribution feeder. This
electrical characteristic in the distribution networks is used to sparsify the volt-
age profile by a difference transformation. The sparsified voltage profile is recovered by a few micro-phasor measurement units (μPMUs) installed along the network. The proposed DSSE technique does not need system observability and measurement redundancy that are the main requirements for conventional
weighted least square state estimators. μPMUs record current passing through adjacent branches to buses and bus voltages synchronously [31]. The captured phasors are related to the system states by:
Z0 ¼ H0x0 + ν0 (6)
where Z02Rm0 ,m0¼p+q, is the measurement vector with p three-phase voltage and q three-phase current measurements, x02Rn0 is the three-phase state vector, ν02Rm0 is the measurement error vector, and H02Rm0�n0 is the constant mea- surement Jacobian matrix:
H0 ¼ IIyA + ys � �
(7)
where II2Rp�n0 is the three-phase representation of the voltage measurement- bus incident matrix, y2Rq�q is the three-phase series admittance matrix, A2Rq�n0 is the three-phase representation of current measurement-bus incident matrix, and ys2Rq�n0 is the three-phase shunt admittance matrix. By writing the Eq. (6) in rectangular coordinates:
Re Z0f g + jIm Z0f g½ � ¼ Re H0f g + jIm H0f g½ �� Re x0f g + jIm x0f g½ � + Re ν0f g + jIm ν0f g½ � (8)
166 CHAPTER 8: Compressive Sensing for Power System Data Analysis
Separating the real and imaginary terms, Eq. (8) is rewritten in matrix form:
Re Z0f g Im Z0f g
� �zfflfflfflfflfflfflffl}|fflfflfflfflfflfflffl{Z ¼ Re H0f g �Im H0f g
Im H0f g Re H0f g � �zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl}|fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{H
Re x0f g Im x0f g
� �zfflfflfflfflfflffl}|fflfflfflfflfflffl{x +
Re ν0f g Im ν0f g
� �zfflfflfflfflfflffl}|fflfflfflfflfflffl{ν (9a)
Z ¼ H �x + ν (9b)
where Z2Rm, H2Rm�n, x2Rn, and ν2Rm (m¼2m0, n¼2n0) are representa- tions of Z0, H0, x0, and ν0 in rectangular coordinates, respectively.
In the DSSE problem, the number of measurements is less than the number of states m<n. Therefore, Eqs. (9a), (9b) is an underdetermined system of
equations with infinite solutions. However, if there is a priori knowledge that
x is a sparse vector most of whose entries are zero or negligible, it can be recovered with a few measurements by solving the ‘1-regularized least-squares
problem [32]
min H �x�Zk k22 + λ xk k1 (10)
where k�k1 denotes the ‘1 norm and λ>0 is the regularization factor. When (x) is not sparse but is compressible, it can be transformed to a sparse vector by
xs ¼ S�x (11)
where xs 2Rn is the sparse representation of the vector x in the transform domain and S2Rn�n is a sparsifying transform matrix. When S is nonsingu- lar, the vector (x) is obtained by x¼S�1 �xs and substituted in Eq. (9b) to form:
Z ¼ ψ �xs + ν (12)
where ψ ¼H�S�1. Eq. (12) is solved by min ψ �xs �Zk k22 + λ xsk k1 (13)
The solution of Eq. (13) xs ∗ yields x∗¼S�1�xs∗ as the solution of Eq. (10).
For the DSSE application, voltages at the two buses of any segment are sub- tracted from each other by a difference transformation. If bus 1 is the infeed
bus and matrix (B) is the three-phase branch-bus incident matrix, the state
vector (x0) in Eq. (6) is sparsified by
S ¼ I3 O3� n�3ð Þ O n�3ð Þ�3 B
� � (14)
where OM�N is an M-by-N matrix of zeros and IN is an N-by-N identity matrix.
1674 Sparse Recovery-Based Dsse In Smart Grid
The performance of the proposed DSSE technique is validated through the sim-
ulation results of the IEEE 123-bus standard unbalanced network containing three-, double-, and single-phase branches with 256 phase-to-ground voltage
variables. The minimum number of μPMUs is optimally placed along the net- work by solving a binary integer linear programming problem in order to obtain a unique solution for the proposed state estimation formulation. Using
the placement algorithm, eight μPMUs are placed at buses 1, 13, 44, 60, 65, 83, 89, and 101 to provide 86 voltage and current phasors.
Actual and estimated voltages in 256 phase-to-ground nodes are illustrated in
Fig. 1. The mean absolute error of the estimated states is 8.017�10�5 (p.u.). This value implies that the proposed technique accurately estimates
n¼2n0¼2�256¼512 system states using only m¼2m0¼2�84¼168 mea- surements that are just 32.8% of the system states. In addition, the actual and estimated sparse representations of the voltage profile are shown in
Fig. 2 where the sparse representation of the voltage profile includes three
FIG. 1
Actual and estimated voltages in the IEEE 123-bus system.
FIG. 2
Actual and estimated sparse representations of the voltage profile.
168 CHAPTER 8: Compressive Sensing for Power System Data Analysis
significant values for the first three nodes and negligible coefficients for
other nodes.
As shown, in addition to the dominant nonzero values corresponding to the
infeed point voltage, the ‘1-regularized least-squares problem will identify cer- tain nonzero voltage drops between the two ends of each segment connected
to big loads, capacitor banks, DGs, and main three-phase feeders supplying
several laterals.
5 SPARSE RECOVERY-BASED FAULT LOCATION IN SMART DISTRIBUTION AND TRANSMISSION NETWORKS
This section introduces a new paradigm for locating single and simultaneous faults in power distribution and transmission networks. The idea is inspired
by the underlying hypothesis that the voltage sag vector, which is the difference
between the pre and during-fault voltages at all buses (N buses), is obtained through multiplying the system impedance matrix (Zbus2RN�N) by the injec- tion fault current vector (ΔI2RN) which is a sparse vector whose nonzero value(s) determine the fault location(s). Since measuring the voltage sag at all buses is not plausible and economic specifically in the distribution net-
works, the voltage sag values are measured by PMUs/smart meters at a few
buses (M≪N buses) and the corresponding rows to those measurement buses are selected from the impedance matrix to form an underdetermined equation
system. The compressive sensing and ‘1-norm minimization are then exploited
to recover the sparse current vector as
‘1 �
:ΔI1
¼ argmin ΔIk k1 s:t:ΔV ¼ Z �ΔI (15)
where ΔI1
2 RN is the estimated current vector, Z2RM�N is the modified system impedance matrix, and ΔV2RM is the voltage sag vector obtained by M≪N measurements in the system.
Due to lack of measurement redundancy, the number of nonzero values in the
current vector is not necessarily equal with number of faults.
Therefore, the nonzero values in the recovered current vector are investigated by
the fuzzy c-mean clustering algorithm to derive four possible fault locations
with this assumption that no more than three simultaneous faults occur. Also, if it is assumed that single faults only occur in the system, a machine learning
technique based on the k-nearest neighbor is proposed to analyze the nonzero
values and estimate a single fault location. If there are (P) dominant values in the normalized current vector whose row numbers are Qi,i¼1, … ,P, the
1695 Sparse Recovery-Based Fault Location In Smart Distribution And Transmission Networks
estimated distance of the faulted point to substation is calculated using Eq. (16)
based on the k-nearest neighbor technique [33].
FL ¼
XP i¼1
FL ið Þ:e� 1�ΔIn Qið Þð Þ 2
XP i¼1
e� 1�ΔIn Qið Þð Þ 2
(16)
where ΔIn denotes the normalized current vector and FL(i) is the distance of the bus associated with the ith dominant value to the substation. The simulation
results of a 13.8 kV, 134 bus distribution network are used to validate the effec-
tiveness of the proposed fault location method. The fault location errors are obtained by subtracting the distance of the actual faulted bus to substation
from the estimated one and categorized in 100 m steps.
The numbers of buses estimated between 0 and 100 m, 100 and 200 m, 200
and 300 m, 300 and 400 m, and higher than 400 m are counted individually
and presented in the result tables. For example, Table 1 presents the results for locating single faults using smart feeder meter data. Method 1 uses Fuzzy-c
means to estimate four possible faulted points and Method 2 uses k-nearest
neighborhood to find a single faulted point.
In the aforementioned studies, it is assumed that faults occur at buses in dis-
tribution networks as the distribution lines are relatively short compared with transmission lines. However, it is necessary to locate the fault along the faulty
line(s) in the transmission networks. Therefore, the recovered nonzero values
in the current vector reconstructed by solving Eq. (15) are used for faulty line(s) detection. The substitution theorem is then used to pinpoint the fault
along the line(s) [34]. If line i�j is identified as the faulty line, the fault cur- rent injected from each of its buses to the fault point (Iij,Iji) is modeled with
Table 1 Simulation Results for Locating Single Faults Using Smart Meters
Fault Type 1pH-g 3pH 2pH-g 2pH
Method No. 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2
ohm 0.5 10 0.5 10 0.5 10 0.5 10 0.5 10 0.5 10 0.5 10 0.5 10
Error
0–100 m 124 120 124 112 121 118 115 110 126 125 122 116 122 126 110 120
100–200 m 7 10 8 16 8 9 15 14 4 6 10 14 8 4 20 11
200–300 m 2 2 1 4 3 5 2 6 3 2 1 3 3 3 3 2
300–400 m 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
>400 m 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Total error (km) 4.4 4.6 5 6.7 5.4 5.1 6.8 7.9 4.4 3.3 5.4 6.5 5.1 4.4 6.7 5.7
FIG. 3
Schematic of substitution theorem in a double-fault scenario.
170 CHAPTER 8: Compressive Sensing for Power System Data Analysis
an identical current source in each bus after the line removal. For two simul-
taneous faults along the lines i1�j1 and i2 �j2, the system is modeled as shown in Fig. 3.
In the positive-sequence system, the fault current sources can be related to the voltage sag phasors in the observable buses and the system impedance matrix in
which the faulted lines are removed as:
ΔV +All ¼ Z +bus,M �ΔI+l (17)
where ΔIl +¼[0…0 Ii1j1
f …0 Ij1i1
f …0 Ii2j2
f …0 Ij2i2
f …0]T2RN is the faulted lines
current vector, ΔVAll + ¼[ΔV1+,ΔV2+…ΔVM+ ,ΔVM+1+ ,…ΔVM+K+ ]T2RM+K is the
voltage sag vector in all observable buses including M measurement and K cal-
culated buses, and Zbus,M + is the modified impedance matrix of the network with
lines i1�j1 and i2�j2 removed. Please note that the recovered nonzero values in the faulty line detection process determine the possible faulty area(s) in the
system. Since the current phasors in the lines connected to the PMU buses are
also measured by PMUs, the during- and prevoltage phasors in the incident buses to PMU buses placed in the healthy areas are calculated using the mea-
sured current phasors. Therefore, K calculated voltage phasors are added to M
measured voltage phasors in the fault distance estimation.
Columns i1,j1,i2, and j2 of Zbus,M + are used to obtain the nonzero values in ΔIl
+
by the overdetermined equation system whose number of equations is more than the number of variables
ΔV +All ¼ z1,i1 z1, j1 z1,i2 z1, j2 z2,i1 z2, j1 z2,i2 z1, j2 ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮
zM + K,i1 zM + K, j1 zM + K,i2 zM + K, j2
2 664
3 775:
I f i1j1
I f j1i1
I f i2j2
I f j2i2
2 66664
3 77775 (18)
Eq. (18) is solved by the least-squares method to find the nonzero values in the ΔIl
+ that are used to calculate the voltage sag phasors at buses i1,j1,i2, and j2 by
Eq. (19) unless they are directly measured by PMUs.
1716 Compressive Sensing-Based PD Pattern Recognition
ΔV +i1 ΔV +j1 ΔV +i2 ΔV +j2
2 664
3 775 ¼
zi1,i1 zi1, j1 zi1,i2 zi1, j2 zj1,i1 zj1, j1 zj1,i2 zj1, j2 zi2,i1 zi2, j1 zi2,i2 zi2, j2 zj2,i1 zj2, j1 zj2,i2 zj2, j2
2 664
3 775:
I f i1j1
I f j1i1
I f i2j2
I f j2i2
2 66664
3 77775 (19)
The fault distance ratio is then estimated by the calculated voltage sags and cur-
rent phasors of the faulted lines.
δij ¼ 1
γijlij
tan h�1 �cos h γijlij
� ΔV +j �Z0ij sin h γijlij
� I f ji + ΔV
+ i
�sin h γijlij �
ΔV +j �Z0ij cos h γijlij �
I f ji �Z0ijI
f ij
8< :
9= ; (20)
δij is calculated for every faulted line, lines i1�j1 and i2�j2. Similarly, Eqs. (17)–(20) can be derived for single fault location.
All fault types with 0, 50, and 100 Ω fault resistances are simulated at 90%, 50%, and 10% of every line in the IEEE 39-bus test system to evaluate the effec- tiveness of the proposed fault location algorithm. The fault location estimation
errors are calculated by Eq. (21) and presented in Table 2.
Error %ð Þ ¼ Actual distance�Estimated distancej j Faulted line length
�100% (21)
6 COMPRESSIVE SENSING-BASED PD PATTERN RECOGNITION
Compressive sensing and ‘1-norm minimization are also used in the sparse rep-
resentation classifier (SRC) for the pattern recognition purpose. This section introduces a new application of SRC in PD pattern recognition. PD lead to
electrical insulation failures in high voltage (HV) and extra high voltage
(EHV) equipment in the long term and consequently electrical equipment out- ages and cascading failures. Therefore, on-line PD monitoring schemes are
essential in academic and industry investigations. Each type of PD source
has a particular pattern which can be recognized by some discriminatory fea- tures that can be extracted from the raw measured data. A classical PD feature
extraction technique is phase-resolved partial discharge (PRPD) by which three
main features of PDs are extracted. They are maximum charge, average charge, and number of PD pulses in each degree of a 360-degree cycle [35]. The
extracted features are trained by a classifier to recognize different patterns.
Table 2 Performance of Fault Location Method for Single Fault Cases
Fault Type (ohm)
Line Percentage (%)
Error Ranges (%)
Average Variance 0– 0.1
0.1– 0.2
0.2– 0.3
0.3– 0.4
0.4– 0.5
Three-phase fault
100 90 11 10 8 1 4 0.1975 0.0179
50 5 13 8 4 4 0.2291 0.0137
10 5 13 8 5 3 0.2311 0.0160
50 99 11 12 6 2 3 0.1844 0.0158
90 11 7 9 3 4 0.2114 0.0208
50 5 12 10 3 4 0.2331 0.0148
10 6 13 6 7 2 0.2182 0.0156
1 12 11 5 4 2 0.1744 0.0173
0 90 11 8 11 0 4 0.1998 0.0188
50 6 10 9 6 3 0.2288 0.0143
10 6 15 8 4 1 0.2041 0.0116
Single-phase- to-ground fault
100 90 8 12 7 2 5 0.2172 0.0202
50 7 11 7 6 3 0.2229 0.0157
10 8 11 7 4 4 0.2286 0.0194
50 99 2 16 8 5 3 0.2471 0.0125
90 12 7 3 4 8 0.2323 0.0310
50 3 10 10 5 6 0.2773 0.0164
10 4 16 7 0 7 0.2380 0.0182
1 2 16 6 6 4 0.2448 0.0159
0 90 10 12 9 1 2 0.1871 0.0145
50 7 13 6 5 3 0.2133 0.0188
10 7 13 9 3 2 0.2001 0.0144
Double-phase fault
100 90 10 10 10 0 4 0.1983 0.0181
50 5 15 7 3 4 0.2225 0.0146
10 5 15 7 3 4 0.2238 0.0153
50 99 10 15 6 1 2 0.1621 0.0125
90 8 13 5 5 3 0.2165 0.0164
50 5 11 11 4 3 0.2357 0.0141
10 7 14 5 5 3 0.2210 0.0176
1 12 11 8 1 2 0.1682 0.0148
0 90 10 9 10 1 4 0.2030 0.0184
50 6 11 8 7 2 0.2289 0.0130
10 6 17 3 5 3 0.2108 0.0154
Double- phase-to- ground fault
100 90 11 11 8 2 2 0.1919 0.0158
50 6 12 8 5 3 0.2266 0.0151
10 6 13 8 4 3 0.2255 0.0164
50 99 8 13 6 4 3 0.1952 0.0159
90 8 10 7 5 4 0.2301 0.0200
50 4 12 10 6 2 0.2346 0.0139
10 5 13 8 5 3 0.2228 0.0137
1 10 12 6 4 2 0.1861 0.0151
0 90 10 9 10 1 4 0.2008 0.0197
50 4 10 11 5 4 0.2393 0.0153
10 8 14 5 4 3 0.2055 0.0158
1736 Compressive Sensing-Based PD Pattern Recognition
In order to assess the SRC performance for PD pattern recognition, 17 samples
are created in a high-voltage lab for classifying internal, surface, and corona PDs. The 17 samples include 15 samples associated with internal PDs and
the two samples for surface and corona PD measurements. The 15 samples con-
sist of 1–5 air voids with dimensions 1, 1.5, and 2 mm. Using the captured PD signals, the features are extracted by a combination of PRPD and signal norms
and fed to SRC for the pattern recognition. As shown in Fig. 4, PDs are mea-
sured during 3000 cycles for each sample and 250 cycles, each comprising 3600 measurements, are randomly selected. Note that each cycle does not nec-
essarily include 3600 PD events. However, the recording system can record the
possible PD events in each 0.1-degree interval.
The maximum discharge (qmx), the mean discharge (qmn), and the rate of PD
repetition (qn) are calculated for every 10 measurements per degree. Therefore, a 3 � 360 matrix is obtained for each cycle. In Fig. 4, qnij, qmxij, and qmnij are the number of PD pulses, maximum discharge, and mean discharge given by the
sum of all discharge magnitudes divided by number of PDs in ith cycle and jth degree, respectively, where i¼1, … ,250 and j ¼ 1,…,360. The figure also shows the qn, qmx, and qmn curves versus cycle numbers and degrees. Next,
the 1-norm, 2-norm, and infinity norm are calculated for each row of the matrix to obtain a 9 � 1 vector. The process is repeated for all 250 selected cycles to obtain a 9 � 250 matrix whose columns are the 9 � 1 vectors of each cycle. The 9 � 250 matrix is the representative for each sample from which 200 fea- ture vectors are used for training and 50 vectors are used for testing in the pat-
tern recognition step. As Fig. 5 shows, the training matrices for every sample
Ti2R9�200,i¼1, … ,M¼17 are linked together to form a dictionary matrix (A) and y2R9 is the test vector which is selected from every 50 test vectors of each sample.
The SRC equation system in Fig. 5 is solved by Eq. (22) to recover the x vector
whose nonzero values assign the selected test sample to one specific class.
x 1 ¼ argmin xk k1 subject to y ¼ Ax (22)
Since the nonzero terms in the recovered x 1 may correspond to different classes,
the following residual function can be formed to minimize the ‘2-distance
between the actual signal feature vector and the recovered
ri ¼ y �Ax 1 ið Þ �� ��
2 ,i ¼ 1,…,M (23)
where x 1 ið Þ is equal to x 1 vector but with all entries other than the ni entries
corresponding to the ith class set equal to zero. The residual of Eq. (23) must
be calculated for all M¼17 classes and the test sample y is assigned to the class with the minimum residual. In order to assess the SRC performance for the PD pattern recognition, four different scenarios are defined below:
F IG . 4
S ch em
at ic of th e fe at u re
ex tr ac tio n al g or ith m .
174 CHAPTER 8: Compressive Sensing for Power System Data Analysis
9×200
Sample 1 Sam ple 1
S am
ple 2 S am
ple M
Sample 2 Sample M
9×(200×M)
T1 T2 TM
A
(200×M)×1
x1,1
x2,1
xM,1 xM,2
xM,200
x2,2
x1,2
x1,200
x2,200 ×
9×200 9×200
X
=
�1 [qnt] �2 [qnt] �µ [qnt] �1 [qmxt] �2 [qmxt] �µ [qmxt] �1 [qmnt] �2 [qmnt] �µ [qmnt]
�1[qn2] �2[qn2] �µ[qn2] �1[qmx2] �2[qmx2] �µ[qmx2] �1[qmn2] �2[qmn2] �µ[qmn2]
�1[qnM] �2[qnM] �µ[qnM] �1[qmxM] �2[qmxM] �µ[qmxM] �1[qmnM] �2[qmnM] �µ[qmnM]
�1[qn1] �2[qn1] �µ[qn1] �1[qmx1] �2[qmx1] �µ[qmx1] �1[qmn1] �2[qmn1] �µ[qmn1]
Test sample
y
FIG. 5
SRC equation system.
1757 Conclusions And Future Of The CS-SR In Smart Grids
• Scenario 1 (7 samples): samples 1,2,…,5 include PDs of 1,2,…,5 internal voids 1 mm, sample 6 is corona, and sample 7 is surface discharge.
• Scenario 2 (7 samples): samples 1,2,…,5 include PDs of 1,2,…,5 internal
voids 1.5 mm, sample 6 is corona, and sample 7 is surface discharge. • Scenario 3 (7 samples): samples 1,2,…,5 include PDs of 1,2,…,5 internal
voids 2 mm, sample 6 is corona, and sample 7 is surface discharge.
• Scenario 4 (17 samples): samples 1,2,…,15 include PDs of 1,2,…,5 internal voids 1 mm, 1,2,…,5 internal voids 1.5 mm, and 1,2,…,5 internal voids
2 mm, sample 16 is corona, and sample 17 is surface discharge.
In order to compare the SRC performance with ANN classifier, a FFBP-NN Mul-
tilayer Preceptor (MLP) is also used to identify PD classes in all four scenarios. The identification percentages for each method in all four scenarios are
presented in Table 3.
As shown, both methods have comparable performance if training process, tuning options, and other tasks for finding the best result from ANN are not
taken into account. Even with this assumption, it is shown that SRC still
outperforms ANN in some cases.
7 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE OF THE CS-SR IN SMART GRIDS
Compressive sensing is an emerging signal processing technique whose appli-
cations in different fields are investigated. This chapter demonstrates some applications of this technique in smart grids. The promising results confirm
the practical usefulness of this technique in power systems. The proliferation
Table 3 Identification Percentages in All Scenarios With SRC and ANN Methods
No Method
Identification Percentage (%)
Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3 Scenario 4
1 SRC 99.7 92.9 94.0 81.6
4 ANN 90.8 95.9 93.6 82.6
176 CHAPTER 8: Compressive Sensing for Power System Data Analysis
of distribution energy resources (DER), e.g. electric vehicles, distributed gener- ators (DGs), and demand response, necessitates visibility and situational
awareness in smart networks. Unlike legacy radial networks with one-way power
flow, smart distribution networks with multiple sources contain notable variabil- ity and uncertainties that must be continuously observed and actively managed.
Distribution systems are not fully telemetered so far due to the huge cost of
deploying the required infrastructure in thousands or tens of thousands of feeders. Therefore, pseudo measurements are not widely available in real distri-
bution networks. For this reason, the state estimation and fault location algo-
rithms using a few low-cost and highly accurate μPMUs have more practical benefits. To improve the reliability and resiliency of the power networks, efficient
fault location schemes must be provided to facilitate rapid response to abnormal
grid conditions. As a result, utilities will be able to better detect and head off potential blackouts, while improving day-to-day grid reliability and enhance
the integration of clean renewable sources of energy onto the grid. The reliability
requirements necessitate some robust and reliable cyber security modules which can be developed using the compressive sensing concept in future.
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- Compressive Sensing for Power System Data Analysis
- Introduction
- Mathematical Modeling of a Compressive Sensing-Sparse Recovery Problem
- Compressive Sensing
- Sparse Recovery Problem
- Applications of CS-SR Techniques in Smart Grids
- Sparse Recovery-Based DSSE in Smart Grid
- Sparse Recovery-Based Fault Location in Smart Distribution and Transmission Networks
- Compressive Sensing-Based PD Pattern Recognition
- Conclusions and Future of the CS-SR in Smart Grids
Book Chapters for Ideas/Chapter-9---Time-Series-Classification-Methods--Rev_2018_Big-Data-Applicatio.pdf
CHAPTER 9
Time-Series Classification Methods: Review and Applications to Power Systems Data
Gian Antonio Susto, Angelo Cenedese, Matteo Terzi University of Padova, Padova, Italy
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
The diffusion in power systems of distributed renewable energy resources, electric vehicles, and con-
trollable loads has made advanced monitoring systems fundamental to cope with the consequent disturbances in power flows; advanced monitoring systems can be employed for anomaly detec-
tion, root cause analysis, and control purposes. Several machine learning-based approaches have
been developed in the past recent years to detect if a power system is running under anomalous
conditions and, eventually, to classify such situation with respect to known problems. One of the aspects, which makes Power Systems challenging to be tackled, is that the monitoring has to
be performed on streams of data that have a time-series evolution; this issue is generally tackled
by performing a features’ extraction procedure before the classification phase. The features’ extrac- tion phase consists of translating the informative content of time-series data into scalar quantities:
such procedure may be a time-consuming step that requires the involvement of process experts to
avoid loss of information in the making; moreover, extracted features designed to capture certain
behaviors of the system, may not be informative under unseen conditions leading to poor moni- toring performances. A different type of data-driven approaches, which will be reviewed in this
chapter, allows to perform classification directly on the raw time-series data, avoiding the features’
extraction phase: among these approaches, dynamic time warping and symbolic-based methodol-
ogies have been widely applied in many application areas. In the following, pros and cons of each approach will be discussed and practical implementation guidelines will be provided.
179
1 INTRODUCTION
The modern trends in energy generation, transmission, and distribution follow
the paradigm of smart infrastructures to gain in service flexibility, reliability, and autonomy while not compromising the overall system performance and con-
trol. Related for example to the decentralized and/or distributed exploitation of
renewable energy resources, the employment of electric vehicle fleets, the man- agement of controllable loads, and these policies have made advanced moni-
toring (AM) systems fundamental to assess line conditions and utilities’
behaviors, in order to grant the requested quality of service to the final user, cope with the presence of disturbances in power flows, and push current gen-
eration of power systems toward their limit.
Big Data Application in Power Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811968-6.00009-7
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
180 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
Pervasive measurement of such a complex and interconnected system of sys-
tems can provide (and do provide) a huge amount of data to be employed for a variety of purposes ranging from failure and anomaly detection [3] to
the demand/response analysis and optimization [4–6], from the root cause analysis [7] to the service provider control [8], and from the predictive/preven- tive maintenance [9] to the physical or cyber-attack prevention [10]. In partic-
ular, the development of phasor measurement units (PMUs) [11], frequency
disturbance recorder [12], and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) [13] have allowed the continuous monitoring of the transmission line and the con-
nected power systems, and can be complemented with utility monitoring
devices, smart meters, insulation monitoring units, to build a thorough picture of the whole grid structure, health, and dynamic behavior.
Nonetheless, to unleash the full value of these complex data sets, algorithms need to be developed to transform these massive dumb data flows into synoptic
smart information and drive the way to manage the energy and power systems
[14]. Indeed, these solutions typically constitute the core of energy manage- ment systems (EMS), which can be specifically translated toward the final
application in factories (FEMS), buildings (BEMS), and home (HEMS) [15].
In this sense, several machine learning (ML)-based approaches [16, 17] have been developed in the past recent years to characterize the behavior of smart grid
systems and power lines, to profile user demand and exploitation of resources
and services, to detect if a power system is running under anomalous condi- tions, to classify such situations with respect to known problems.
1.1 Contribution
In this chapter, we will try to provide an overview of the main ML techniques that are used in the context of power systems. Without aiming at being exhaus-
tive, the main goal of this contribution is to highlight the differences among
the approaches in terms of information they can provide and issues in their usage. In particular, we will use the term classification to indicate the subfield
of ML in the realm of supervised learning where “supervised” indicates that the
output is known: given a signal x belonging to some domain as an input and a finite set of different classes (the output), the problem of supervised learn- ing consists on finding a rule that associates x to one y 2 . In general, the set of output classes (also called dictionary) is obtained according to a training pro- cedure where a training input dataset is used to characterize both and the learning rule.
In the context of power systems, we are facing classification problems when dealing with fault detection and isolation (FDI), predictive maintenance,
AM, user profiling, and cyber-security applications. Just to provide an example
1811 Introduction
in the case of FDI, one output class can be related to the normal behavior of the
power system, while additional classes can be referred to known problems like voltage sags, voltage swells, fault currents, voltage oscillations, and frequency
oscillations, while the input signals are time-series generated from multiple
continuous data flows such as PMUs data, currents, or voltages: the task of an FDI algorithm is to interpret heterogeneous signals coming from different
measurement units in order to discern and understand the state of the overall
system [2].
1.2 Notation
Throughout this chapter, we consider a time-series z• as a (finite-length) sequence of n ordered real values at time instants t•,1, …, t•,n. For the sake of
simplicity, and without loss of generality, we assume that the time series is
obtained through a preprocessing phase that may include sampling and win- dowing of the continuous data flow coming from a measurement unit. The
time series is then characterized by p input descriptors x (whose meaning will
be clearer in the following), hence the input space is p-dimensional, and a training set composed by N signals {x(1), …, x(N)} allows to define the class
set . These basic definitions and notation are shown in Fig. 1 and summarized in Table 1.
In Fig. 2 the data flow from sensors (PMUs or other types) to classification is
represented with the notations adopted in this chapter to indicate all the related quantities. For the sake of clarity, Table 2 provides the list of acronyms adopted
throughout this chapter.
v(t) zk + 1
zk − 1 zk
zk(tk,1, tk,2, . . . , tk,n)
τ
FIG. 1
Windowing procedure. Finite-length windows zk are extracted from the raw data stream v to obtain time
series.
Table 1 Summary Table of the Main Adopted Notation
Symbol Description
t 2 Time t Time of interest
R Number of nodes in the power system cluster
S � R Number of data sources generating signals q � R Cardinality of raw signal vðtÞ 2 q � Raw signal k 2 Window index τ 2 [0, 1) Window overlap parameter n Cardinality of samples per window
q � q Cardinality of preprocessed signal zkðtk,1,…,tk,nÞ 2 n�q Preprocessed signal p � n Number of signal descriptors � p Domain of signal descriptors x ¼ x1,…,xp 2 Signal descriptors N Number of observations available for training
x1,…,xN � �
Set of input data for training
y1,…,yN � �
Set of output labels for training
D 2 N�ðp + 1Þ Design matrix for training M � Number of observations of reduced dataset (e.g., dictionary
learning)
M Number of classes
Class dictionary y 2 Class label fð�Þ : ! Classifier/association rule
PMU 1
PMU 2
PMU S
.
.
.
Raw signals Preprocessing
Online
Offline
Context info database
v(t t ∈
q–) ∈ R (––�, t)
zk − 1
f (x) = y ∈Y
f (.)
f (.)
yzk−1
zk+1 zk
zk−1
zk+1 zk
zk zk + 1
zk(tk,1, . . . , tk,n) n × q
Rzk(.) ∈
X ∈
p RX
Y
∈
p R
FIG. 2
Data flow. Scheme of the data flow from sensors (PMUs or other types) to classification.
182 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
Table 2 Summary Table of the Main Acronyms Used in the Text
Acronyms Descriptions
1-NN 1 Nearest neighbor
1-NN-DTW 1-NN with DTW distance
AR Auto regressive
ARMA Auto regressive moving average
ARIMA Auto regressive integrated moving average
BEMS Building energy management system
BoF Bag of features
BoSS Bag-of-SFA symbols
BoSS-VS BoSS-vector space
BoW Bag of words
DB Distance based
DBA DTW Barycenter averaging
DFT Discrete Fourier transform
DR Dimensionality reduction
DDTW Derivative dynamic time warping
DT Decision tree
DTW Dynamic time warping
DTWUDC DTW under dynamic constraints
DWT Discrete wavelet transform
DNN Deep neural network
EBC Ensemble of bundle classifier
EMS Energy management system
ERP Edit distance with real penalty
ESN Echo state network
FB Feature based
FDI Fault detection and isolation
FEMS Factory energy management system
GP Gaussian process
HEMS Home energy management system
HMM Hidden Markov model
ICA Independent component analysis
IF Interval feature
k-NN k-Nearest neighbors
LDA Linear discriminant analysis
LR Logistic regression
LSM Liquid state machine
MCB Multiple coefficient binning
MDS Multidimensional scaling
ML Machine learning
MMCL Model metric colearning
Continued
1831 Introduction
Table 2 Summary Table of the Main Acronyms Used in the Text Continued
Acronyms Descriptions
mRmR Minimum redundancy maximum relevance
NR Numerosity reduction
PAA Piecewise aggregate approximation
PCA Principal component analysis
PDC Phasor data concentrator
PMU Phasor measurement unit
RF Random forest
RVM Relevance vector machine
SAX Symbolic aggregate approximation
SFA Symbolic Fourier approximation
SIFT Scale invariant feature transform
SMTS Symbolic multivariate time series
SVM Support vector machine
TWED Time warping with edit distance
VAR Vector autoregressive model
VSM Vector space model
WDTW Weighted dynamic time warping
184 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
2 THE CLASSIFICATION PROBLEM
The research on classification of time series has been of certain interest for some
decades and in various fields, from speech recognition [18] to financial analysis
[19], from manufacturing [20] to, of course, power systems [2, 21–23], and it is even more of key importance in this era of big data and pervasive information
flow. Specifically, two cornerstone issues need to be addressed:
• How do we compare different time series? In particular, how do we
compare time series with different lengths? • How can we recognize that different time series are realizations of a
common (unknown) process which represents a certain class?
The last question is particularly relevant in AM applications: if a database of
known failures is available, detection of current failures could be performed
and exploited in predictive maintenance [24]/fault detection (FD) and FDI solutions. Some works in AM of power systems formalize FD and FDI problems
as semisupervised ones, where particular classifiers (like One-Class-SVM) are
built on a single group of data: such data are usually associated with normality conditions [25]; the goal of this classifiers is to create a solution that define a
“normality space”: when a new observation is available, it will be classified as
anomaly if it lies outside the boundaries of the normality space. Such problem
1852 The Classification Problem
formulation can also be tackled with some of the methodologies presented in
this chapter.
2.1 Classification Methods Taxonomy
For the sake of clarity, we provide a brief introduction to the different method- ologies treated in this work that can be employed to solve the classification task
with power system data. Time-series classification techniques can be essentially
divided into two main branches:
• Feature-based (FB). FB methods perform a feature extraction procedure
before the classification phase. In general, from the original signal v(t) a moving window k of fixed length n is considered to obtain a time-series zk and a set x of p features is calculated over it: to give some examples,
commonly chosen features are mean, variance, maximum, minimum, entropy, all related to the time series extracted from the signal.
The idea underlying these methods is to capture signal statistics that
identify a certain class of signals. In theory, if a process is weakly stationary then a second-order statistic is sufficient to characterize that signal;
however, signals obtained from real-world scenarios are not stationary
due to several nuisance factors and many more features may be necessary to summarize the informative content.
In this respect, some observations are in order: unfortunately,
nonautomatic feature extraction procedures may be a time-consuming step that requires the involvement of process experts to avoid loss of
information; moreover, extracted features designed to capture certain
behaviors of the system, may not be informative under unseen conditions leading to poor monitoring performances. Finally, the tuning of n is far to
be trivial for optimal results: normally, it is estimated through a cross-
validation procedure [26]. When dealing with the learning phase in FB methods, the learning rule is based on the definition of a dataset of N
observations and of a design matrix as
D ¼ xð1Þ yð1Þ
xð2Þ yð2Þ
⋮ ⋮ xðNÞ yðNÞ
2 664
3 775 2 N�ðp + 1Þ: (1)
• Distance-based (DB). DB methods avoid the feature extraction phase in favor of the definition of suitable distances, among which the most
common is dynamic time warping (DTW) [27]. Then, the classification
phase is carried out through metric classifiers: one simple and popular choice and, surprisingly, one of the most effective is 1-nearest neighbor
classifier (1-NN) [26].
Time-series classification methods
Feature-based (FB) (SVM, RF, others)
Distance-based (DB)
Reduction-based (SAX,…)
Purely DB (DTW, ED)
Parametric DB (DWT,...)
FIG. 3
Classification taxonomy. Time-series classification methodologies’ tree highlighting the two families of
feature based and distance based.
186 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
This strategy is motivated by the fact that the feature extraction phase could be time consuming and may cause significant loss of information
about the original signal [28]. Conversely, though, due to nuisance
factors, the DB direct comparison of time series (e.g., by exploiting the Euclidean distance) may lead to ill-posed problems and unsatisfactory
performances, thus calling for a careful selection of the distance metrics
that trades off between complexity (of the measure) and accuracy (in the classification).
This main categorization is also summarized in Fig. 3.
2.2 Computational Issues
The ML techniques to be employed in big data-related applications strongly
depend on the architecture of the EMS infrastructure that delivers the task.
In the context of power systems, the architecture can be represented as a main “parent” system unit that monitors and controls the connected “child”
nodes. In turn, each node is a smaller unit that processes the measurements
derived from multiple PMUs. A typical scheme of an EMS architecture is shown in Fig. 4.
Given this structure, the main unit is provided with powerful hardware in terms of computational and memory resources, while, conversely, the nodes are
equipped with resource-limited hardware. The described network architecture
must to be taken into account in the classification algorithms design and the algorithmic burden must be distributed over the system; the main system unit
will be able to run demanding algorithms in a centralized fashion while nodes
will constitute a computational grid with the parallel computation of parsimo- nious local procedures. In this respect, a further premise is needed to allow a
better understanding of the remainder of this chapter. A learning algorithm
Cluster DB/ data
collection
Sensors (PMUs,
temperature)
Remote monitoring and
control unit
Node 1
Remote monitoring and
control unit
Sensors (PMUs,
temperature)
Node R
Remote M.S (Grid connection, distribution, loads)
Centralized M.S (BEMS, FEMS, HEMS)
Centralized system model
User visualization
C lu
st e
r o
f R
n o
d e
s
FIG. 4
Energy management system (EMS). Logical block diagram of EMS with the two main parts of remote
monitoring and centralized control. These solutions are then specialized into HEMS, BEMS, FEMS,
according to their employment within the residential, building, factory environments.
1872 The Classification Problem
can be characterized in terms of complexity according to two different points of
view, namely space complexity and time complexity: clearly, when dealing with
resource-constrained systems, it is crucial to take into account both these aspects. For example, time-complexity is composed by two terms, respectively,
related to training complexity and classification complexity: in most applica-
tions the training phase is run on systems with high computation and memory capabilities, while the classification complexity can be reduced so that the
algorithmic solution can be implemented in the nodes.
There is also another point that forces nodes to be equipped with parsimonious
algorithms: generally, in the nodes an online monitoring action is required in
order to detect anomalies as soon as possible; in these settings, thus, classifica- tion must be executed almost in real time. Conversely, this does not necessarily
apply for central units, where, generally, offline analyses are performed.
An important example of algorithms that are suited only for central units, but not for nodes, is lazy-learning approaches. Lazy-learning algorithms are techniques,
like nearest neighbors (NN), where all the computational burden is in the eval-
uation of the classifier and not in its creation: such methods generally exploit comparisons with historical data to perform the classification of a new observa-
tions; given these premises, it is apparent that lazy-learning approaches cannot be
adopted in nodes since: (i) the evaluation there need to be performed as quick as
188 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
possible; (ii) nodes do not have access to the whole network data, and therefore
the comparisons on that level can be made only on a local, smaller database (not always available) leading to suboptimal classification performances.
Considering this complex scenario, we provide here some general guidelines on which types of algorithms are suited for remote (nodes) and central (main)
units. As we will see throughout this chapter, among the two sets of techniques
we highlighted before, there are better choices per se and with respect to the specific application; indeed, both FB and DB methods can be simple or cum-
bersome depending on their formulations. In fact, as FB algorithms with an
high number p of features may be prohibitive, the same applies to DB algo- rithms where an high number N of training examples are considered.
Nonetheless, various data reduction procedures may be applied in order to
reduce the complexity of learning algorithms. For example, reduction tech- niques such as symbolic aggregate approximation (SAX) or discrete Fourier
transform (DFT) are computationally simple and induce an approximation that may be considered as acceptable for most real applications in power sys-
tems. Given the crucial importance of parsimony in power systems, the follow-
ing section is devoted to discuss data reduction techniques.
3 DATA SOURCES
One of the main practical issues in modern time-series classification is the prob- lem of time and space complexity of data. In general, dealing with huge datasets is
computationally expensive and, under some conditions, even unfeasible, espe-
cially with resource-constrained hardware. On the other hand, in most real- world problems, the informative content of a dataset is generally sparse (i.e.,
the useful information size is much “smaller” than the size of original dataset).
For these reasons, research in big data classification has been focused on devel- oping suitable techniques to optimize and reduce the data representation. In
the related literature, the procedures related to translating data into
simplified and informative representation are called data reduction.
In the context of power systems, this problem arises due to huge amount of data
coming from PMUs and other sensors. As represented in Fig. 5, PMUs (and
other sensors) are connected to local phasor data concentrators (PDCs) and, jointly, to a corporate PDC, receives data from different PDCs. To give insights
on how this structure generates an amount of data in the realm of big data, only one PCD collecting data from 100 PMUs of 20 measurements each at 30-Hz
sampling rate generates over 50 GB of data 1 day [29]. Hence, data reduction
is fundamental to reduce data storage and to best capture the interaction between different PMU locations.
PMU
PMU
PMU
PMU
PMU
PMU
PMU
PMU
PMU
Local PDC
Local PDC
Local PDC
Corporate PDC
Data storage
Regional PDC
Data storage
Data reduction Time-series classification
(event detection,…)
PDC: Phasor data concentratorRaw PMU data Preprocessed PMU data
PMU: Phasor measurement unitAlgorithm phases
FIG. 5
Typical power system scheme data flow. Detailed structure of a EMS where the data streams and the
procedure units are represented (note that other data sources than PMUs may be in place).
1893 Data Sources
For the sake of clarity, and to avoid confusion due to different notations used in
related literature, we distinguish two data reduction techniques in which we are
interested in: dimensionality reduction and numerosity reduction. In this section we will present the most important time-series representations for these two types of
reduction; for a more exhaustive review, we refer the interested reader to [30, 31].
3.1 Dimensionality Reduction
We refer to dimensionality reduction (DR) when dealing with FB techniques.
More in detail, let us consider a design matrix D 2 RN�p, with a high- dimensional feature space (e.g., when p is very large; generally p > 1000);
DR aims at finding a subset of informative features (feature selection) or, more
generally, informative lower-dimensional structures through linear (e.g., prin- cipal/independent component analysis) and nonlinear (e.g., manifold learn-
ing) data transformation approaches.
In this context, although the space complexity can be overwhelming, the main
issue is the renowned curse of dimensionality [26]. It manifest itself in various
ways, which all causes high variance and high bias of classifiers resulting in poor classification performance. In fact, when p is high, all feasible training
samples sparsely populate the feature space and the concept of locality vanish.
190 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
This problem can be easily seen with the k-NN classifier and considering fea-
tures uniformly distributed in a p-dimensional unit hypercube: when p ¼ 1000, in order to capture for example 10% of data to evaluate local average,
it is necessary to consider the 99.7% of the range of each feature.
3.1.1 DR Techniques Review As already stated earlier, the informative content of a signal is often embedded
in a low-dimensional space that can be isolated through DR techniques.
Among the most popular methodologies, we mention here generalized dis- criminant analysis [32], independent component analysis (ICA) [33, 34], ker-
nel PCA [35, 36], linear discriminant analysis (LDA) [37], multidimensional
scaling (MDS) [38], and principal component analysis (PCA) [39, 40]. In the realm of nonlinear approaches, manifold learning, whose objective is to
learn the hidden manifold described by the data [41–44], has been gaining lot of attention in the past recent years.
A simpler, but often equally efficient, DR approach is to remove redundant
(correlated) features, selecting a subset of relevant features, instead of finding the underlying low-rank structure of the data at hand. Well-known feature
selection techniques are backward feature elimination, forward feature
construction, minimum redundancy maximum relevance (mRmR), just to provide some examples. Interestingly, random forests (RFs), besides being
among the most effective classifiers, are also powerful instruments for feature
selection [45].
For an exhaustive description, we refer the interested readers to [46]. In the con-
text of power systems, recently, Zhou et al. [2, 23] adopted a data-driven feature-based approach combining mRmR reduction technique with an ensem-
ble of bundle classifier (EBC), which combines individual classifiers in order to
handle the heterogeneity of the PMU data.
3.2 Numerosity Reduction
We refer as numerosity reduction (NR) when aiming at reducing data volume
by choosing alternative, smaller forms of data representation of the signals at hand. It differs from DR in the sense that it aims at finding a different represen-
tation of time series and/or reducing the number N of training examples
needed for classification without reducing accuracy. For example, consider a collection of N input univariate time-series x 2 nf gNi¼1. Data reduction tech- niques aim at reducing n and/or N.
3.2.1 NR Techniques Review In this framework, to reduce both n and N, parametric and nonparametric
approaches may be employed for NR. Parametric approaches model the time
series using a parametric model such as discrete wavelet transform (DWT), DFT,
1913 Data Sources
and log-linear models to cite the most common examples. Then the complexity
space reduces from O(n) to O(p) where x 2 p is p-dimensional vector of parameters of the model. Example of nonparametric approach is histogram
or, simply, sampling.
Another family of NR approaches is symbolic representation, for which SAX
[47, 48] is the most know technique. SAX technique mainly consists of three
phases:
• signals standardization in order to obtain a zero mean and unit variance
signal; • piecewise aggregate approximation (PAA) [49] described in the
following; and
• symbolic mapping through discretization on amplitude domain.
After normalization, in the PAA phase, a signal z ¼ z1, …, zn let z ¼ z1,…,zp of length s is discretized on time in p frames in order to obtain a vector
z ¼ z1,…,zp 2 p. Formally, the resulting ith element zi is defined by the mean of ith interval:
zi ¼ p
s
X s
p i
j¼ s
p ði�1Þ + 1
zj (2)
Then, the SAX representation procedure (i.e., the discretization on amplitude
domain) can be summarized as follows. Let ai denote the ith element of the alphabet A, with jAj ¼ α. The mapping from the PAA approximation to the cor- respondent word x ¼ x1, …, xp of length p is obtained as follow: xi ¼ aj iif βj�1 � zi < βj (3)
where βj
n oα�1 j¼1
are breakpoints tuned to have symbols with equiprobable
occurrence. One of the advantages of introducing the SAX representation is that
a new distance measure—which is a lower bound of Euclidean distance—can be immediately defined. Let z(1) and z(2) be two time series of same length n
and xð1Þ ¼ xð1Þ1 ,…,x ð1Þ p and x
ð2Þ ¼ xð2Þ1 ,…,x ð2Þ p be their SAX symbolic representation;
the SAX distance is defined as:
DSAXðzð1Þ,zð2ÞÞ ¼ ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi n
p
Xp i¼1
dist x ð1Þ i ,x
ð2Þ i
� �2s (4)
Another popular symbolic approach is the symbolic Fourier approximation (SFA) [50]. The SFA accepts the same parameters p and α as SAX. In this case, p represents the number of Fourier coefficients (real and imaginary) used. Nat-
urally, each sliding window is normalized to have a standard deviation of one
192 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
to obtain amplitude invariance, before applying SFA. Provided the parameters,
the SFA symbolization is carried out in due main steps:
1. preprocessing phase called multiple coefficient binning (MCB)
discretization, and 2. SFA transformation.
In the phase (1) the p coefficients (real and imaginary) ci are extracted for all the
training time series and histogram is built for each ci, where each bin corre- sponds. Then each histogram is used to infer the breakpoints βij, i ¼ 1, …, wp, j ¼ 1, …, α + 1 in order to make symbols equiprobable. In the phase (2) each coefficient is extracted and it mapped to a symbol according to break- points found in the MCB phase. Then the string representing the time series
is formed by the sequence of coefficients. Thus, to find a second-order resolu-
tion (two coefficients) there are two real plus two imaginary coefficients result- ing in a word of length four. SFA presents some important difference from SAX:
first of all, the time complexity (to transform a single time-series z) is OðnlognÞ while SAX time complexity is O(n). However, provided the same word length, SFA best represents the raw signal as it does not apply any piece-wise discretiza-
tion, but expresses a linear combination of continuous Fourier functions
through the learned coefficients. Moreover, in opposite to SAX, if we wanted a finer resolution increasing p, it would not be necessary to recalculate all
DFT coefficients as the symbols of a smaller word length are always a prefix
of the larger word lengths.
Regarding the reduction of N, the most popular approaches are clustering and
dictionary learning. Time-series clustering aims at finding groups (clusters) in which data can be divided. A way to speed up clustering approaches (that are
generally in the realm of lazy-learning approaches [26]), “mean” (or centroid)
time series for each cluster is usually taken as representative of each group: this generally requires M
� comparisons instead of N, and, since N≫ M
� , this decreases
considerably the time to perform the clustering. Similarly, dictionary learning
techniques find a sort of base of M �
signals, from which a given signal can be represented as a linear combination. Indeed, in the classification context, the
supervised dictionary learning aims at learning a dictionary containing the ele-
ments which best represent the classes and thus they find a discriminative representation.
4 CLASSIFICATION METHODS
4.1 Feature-Based Methods
Assuming a dataset of N time-series zk, k ¼ 1, …, N, and M possible target classes ¼ fy1,…,yMg that jointly describe the classification problem of interest,
1934 Classification Methods
FB methods focus on finding a compact description x ¼ ½x1,…,xp 2 of the time-series zk such that p � n (and typically p ≪ n); all these N observations are collected into a matrix D 2 N�ðp + 1Þ, called design matrix, as defined in Eq. (1). In practice, D represents the supervised learning phase of the procedure
and it is exploited to define the rule fð�Þ : ! according to a chosen classi- fication method [26] as better detailed in the following.
In this category, the most employed classification algorithms are k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) [26], support vector machines (SVMs) [1, 51], relevance vec-
tor machine (RVM) [52], decision trees (DT) [53], RF [54], logistic regression
(LR) [55], Gaussian processes (GP) [56], and deep neural networks (DNN) [57]. We refer the interested reader to the literature references for further details
on the specific methods and the general textbooks [26, 58].
4.1.1 Metrics-Based Approaches The techniques earlier are not straightforwardly applicable to continuous
time series since they need input vectors of fixed length, and this justifies their inclusion in the FB methods.1 As a matter of fact, even if the time series
in input to the classifier were discrete time and of fixed length, the accuracy
performance would be poor due to two main reasons: first, it is common to consider long sequences of samples of n > 100 or even n > 1000; in these
cases the space spanned by the time series is too large and sparse incurring in
the aforementioned “curse of dimensionality” problem. Second, considering the discrete values as independent features would be not reasonable, since
they do not provide any information per se about the characteristics of
the signal, since time-series values are strongly highly correlated on time and the feature extraction phase is exactly designed so as to highlight this
correlation.
The flowchart of the FB classification procedure is given in Fig. 6: after a
preprocessing phase on the raw signal characterized by the presence of a
low-pass filtering operation to reduce measurement noise and the windowing procedure, the proper feature extraction task is performed on the time series,
Preprocessing (LPF)
Feature extraction
Dimensionality reduction
Classification (SVM, RF,...)
LabelRaw signal
zk X
v(t) y
FIG. 6
FB methods. Operation flow of FB classification procedures.
1This is partly true for deep learning approaches: recent deep neural networks schemes can avoid the
feature extraction phase.
194 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
resulting in a compact set of signal descriptors, which undergo the classification
phase.
The main advantages of the FB methods clearly reside in the compactness in the
representation able to characterize the signal. Typical examples of features are follows.
• Sample features: sample variance/mean/RMS value of the time series.
• Energy/power features: energy value from the DFT coefficients, power spectrum bands.
• Correlation features: number/location/width of (prominent) peaks in the
autocorrelation function (repetitive and periodic signals present a peak in the autocorrelation function); correlation parameters among different
signal dimensions.
Unfortunately, though, the FB approach presents also several drawbacks:
• features must be defined ad hoc depending to the task2; • high dimensionality;
• nonstationarity of time series; and
• time structures are not considered.
It clearly appears from these lists that most of feature-based ML techniques are
not adapted to exploit time structures (i.e., patterns), which are an intrinsic and
distinctive characteristic of each time series. In this regard, the first attempts to exploit patterns can be found in Refs. [59–61]. In particular, in Kadous [60] parameterized events are extracted from multivariate time series: these events
are clustered in the parameters space and the resulting prototypes are used as basis to build classifiers. Instead, Kudo et al. [61] maps multivariate time series
into binary vectors: the space value-time is represented by a grid and each ele-
ment (of the vector) is associated with one cell of the grid count: if the signal passes through the corresponding cell, the element is true (1) otherwise it is
false (0). Then, these converted binary vectors are used as the basis for the
classification.
More in general, a limitation to these methods stem from the fact that classifi-
cation rules are extracted taking into account absolute time values, leading to the inability of handling situations where particular behaviors happen at differ-
ent time values: Geurts [62] argues that many time-series classification prob-
lems can be solved by detecting and combining local properties (patterns) on time series, and proposes a procedure that captures the information of
shift-invariant patterns using DTs over piece-wise constant time series.
2This is one of the main reasons that favors the usage of deep learning in complex problem such as natural
language processing and computer vision: in these fields, the definition of informative features has
required at least 20 years of research.
1954 Classification Methods
More recently, interval features (IFs) have been introduced in order to capture
temporal information [63–66]. These features are common statistics such as mean, variance, slope but they are calculated over random intervals exploiting
a boosting procedure. The first idea on IFs was presented in Rodrı́guez et al.
[63], later expanded by Rodrı́guez and Alonso [64] and Rodrı́guez et al. [65] using classifiers such as DTs and SVMs applied on the features extracted from
binary ensembles. However, as discussed in Deng et al. [66], the number of
candidate splits is generally large and thus there can be multiple splits having the same ability of separating the classes. To cope with these issues, Deng
et al. [66] introduce an additional measure able to better distinguish among
IFs. Another problem in boosting IFs is the size of the relative space that is O(n2), where n is the length of a time series. In Rodrı́guez et al. [63] the fea-
ture space is reduced to OðnlognÞ using only intervals of length equal to powers of two. Deng et al. [66] consider the same approach of random sam- pling strategy used on RF [54] further reducing the feature space at each node
to O(n).
4.1.2 Occurrence Counting Approaches Another type of approaches to classify time series is the so-called bag-of-words
(BoW), also bag-of-features (BoF), nowadays used in image classification and
document classification and classically developed in the context of natural lan- guage processing. BoW consists in representing data (images in computer
vision or documents in natural language processing) using a histogram of word
occurrences, where a word is a task-dependent element [67], namely a proper textual word in language processing or the image description through intensity
local gradients in computer vision. After this encoding, the classification task is
reduced to computing a histogram-based similarity (typically using Euclidean distance).
With respect to the two steps of (i) conversion of the time series into a BoW representation (i.e., an histogram of the word occurrences) and (ii) training
of a classifier (such as SVM, RF, kNN) upon BoW features, we particularly focus
on step (i) in the following, since step (ii) is similarly performed by all methods using RF, SVM, or some other common classifier over the word histogram.
Indeed, several BoW-inspired techniques have been recently investigated in
order to extract local and global features [68–76]. Hereafter, a brief overview of the main contributions is given.
In the computer vision field, the BoW technique is used for image classification [77] often in combination with the scale invariant feature transform (SIFT)
technique. SIFT is a covariant detector, which extracts local features (keypoints)
that are robust to noise (e.g., changes in illumination) and invariant to affine transformations and scale. As a general note, BoW methods ignore temporal
ordering, which may cause that patterns in observed time series or images
196 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
are not identified. Nonetheless, some BoW-based works try to indirectly
remove this lack, although to a limited extent. For example, in Bailly et al. [73, 76] a variant of SIFT for time series is applied and local features (keypoints’
descriptors) are extracted with a procedure very similar to SIFT and BoW
approach is used over the SIFT descriptors. This choice is motivated by the fact that SIFT captures local structures while BoW allows to describe the global
behavior of the time series. Furthermore, in Bailly et al. [76], the same authors
adopt dense-SIFT-like descriptor: the main difference with the previous work is that keypoints no longer correspond to extrema but are rather extracted at all
scales every time step on Gaussian-filtered time series. This approach in general
leads to more robust global descriptors, especially when local extrema can be found (when signal are very smooth).
In Wang et al. [69], DWT is applied on sliding windows of the time series and the resulting DWT coefficients form a word for each window (segment). In the
training phase all the DWT segments are clustered through k-means in order to
obtain a word dictionary D. In the classification phase each DWT window is assigned to the nearest word in D, to build a histogram that is used to computed
the similarity; the classification is finally carried out using 1-NN.
A BoF framework is proposed also in Bailly et al. [70], which combines IFs and
BoW. Here, there are extracted IFs and start/end time points over random sub-
sequences of random length, and a supervised codebook of class probability estimate (CPE) histogram is built in the training phase: for each sequence
(of the time series) a CPE is found using an RF classifier. Then, all the CPEs
are quantized in order to form a different histogram for each class, which are concatenated into a single histogram of each time series and are used as
features in combination with other global features. Finally, the employed
classifier is RF.
A symbolic multivariate time series (SMTS) method is discussed in Baydogan
et al. [72]: each time series is represented by a feature space, which contains
the time instants, the time-series values, and the first difference values, all col- lected in a design matrix D. Then D is input to a symbolic discretization which is
obtained using tree-based classifiers (supervised discretization). Then the clas-
sification is performed using a common BoW approach based on histograms of symbols. Its total computational complexity is due to the number of trees, the
number of training instances, and the number of time-series subsequences
extracted. Then, multivariate time series are mapped into a feature matrix, where features are vectors containing a time index t, the values, and the gradient
of time series at t for all dimensions. The feature space is finally partitioned into regions (i.e., symbols) by an RF classifier. An appreciable property of SMTS is
that it does not require tuning parameters, while one main drawback of this
1974 Classification Methods
representation is the possibly high dimensionality, which limits its application
for large datasets.
In Sch€afer [74] the bag-of-SFA-symbols (BoSS) is introduced. An univariate
time-series z is represented by SFA words and then an histogram is built. How- ever, since this approach is O(N2n2) for training, O(Nn) for classification, in
Sch€afer [75] it is presented a “scalable version” named BoSS-VS that uses vector
space models (VSMs). In this case, once the BoSS histogram is obtained, for each SFA word w, the word (called term) frequency tf of w in a certain class ci is com-
puted, together with the ratio idf given by the total number of classes divided by
the number of classes in which w appears. Then, the tf-idf measure is obtained by the product tf idf: this measure is used to weigh the word frequencies in the vector to give a higher weight to representative words of a class. The motivation
behind this choice is that an high tf-idf for a word w means that w appears with an high frequency in a specific class ci, while low tf-idf values means that w in
common in all classes. When a new observation znew arrives, the BoSS histo-
gram and the relative tf vector are computed. Then the cosine similarity3 is obtained in order to predict the nearest class. Using this model (named
“term frequency inverse document frequency,” tf-idf, model), the complexities
of training and classification reduce to O(Nn3/2) and O(n), respectively.
In Lin et al. [68] and Senin and Malinchik [71] time series are mapped into SAX
words through a sliding windows partitioning, which are used to build histo- grams of n-grams: for each time series an histogram counts the frequency of
occurrences of each SAX word and thus each time series is represented by its
histogram. In particular, in Senin and Malinchik [71], the authors combine SAX and VSM [78] exploiting the tf-idf model [79, 80], weighing bags, and
cosine similarities as metrics. This technique has a parameter space of dimen-
sion O(n2) and needs to recompute all SAX coefficients for each new choice of parameters p (number of frames in the PAA representation) and α (cardinality of the alphabet); moreover, the training time is O(Nn3) where N is the number
of training instances.
4.1.3 Dynamics-Based Approaches The last set of FB techniques we present in this review explicitly takes into account the dynamics of the signals and comes from dynamical systems and signal processing
theory. In the context of dynamical systems and identification theory, in the
past decades much attention has been conveyed on modeling stochastic pro- cesses (whose realizations are time series) in order to predict their future trends
3Given two vectors x1 and x2, both in , the cosine similarity is defined as cosβ ¼ hx1,x2ikx1k kx2k, where h•, •i is the inner product.
198 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
and values. The most common models are Auto-Regressive (AR), Auto-
Regressive-Moving-Average (ARMA), and Auto-Regressive-Integrated-Moving- Average (ARIMA)models[81],justtogive someexamples.Withsuch approaches,
the coefficients themselves of the fitted model are used as features for a suitable
classifier [82, 83] or are used to build a more complex generative model [84].
In more detail, Roberts [84] takes a Bayesian point of view and proposes a hier-
archical model that consists of a feature extraction stage and a generative clas- sifier, probabilistically linked by a latent feature space. The classifier is
implemented as an hidden Markov model (HMM) with Gaussian and multino-
mial observation distributions defined on a representation of AR models. The HMM is used to model the correlation between adjacent windows (subse-
quences), that is, this model assumes that time series are consecutively extracted
from an unique flow.
In a similar way, signal-processing transformations such as DFT or DWT are
applied to the raw signals to obtain coefficients that can be exploited in training suitable classifiers [85–87]. Interestingly, DWT results to be more suitable for nonstationary time series and, conversely w.r.t. DFT, is ideal for identifying
highly discriminant local time and scale features [88]. We note that DWT and DFT and dynamical models can be seen as dimensionality reduction pro-
cedures: in the next section, we will revise these concepts from the point of view
of distance-based methods.
Eruhimov et al. [89] gathered the most known features deriving from the
presented methods such as statistical moments, wavelets coefficients, PCA coef-
ficients, Chebyshev coefficients, and the original values of time series and built a classifier from them. However, this method can be accurate at the cost
of complexity and a feature selection procedure is needed to reduce the
dimensionality.
Although time-pattern (dynamic) information has been considered in litera-
ture, most of feature-based models present common limitations due to the nature of time series. In fact, the presence of variability in the time series causes
these methods to be ineffective to cope with common issues. The variability
arises because of the stochasticity of the process generating the time series, non- stationarity of time series, and nuisance factors. To give a practical example, the
most effective FB methods that exploit time-patterns presented in this chapter
are not able to deal with variable time-series lengths and the other methods which can handle this issue exploits only global statistics making them ineffec-
tive with nonstationarity.
Finally, perhaps the most limiting issue of feature-based methods is that the
feature extraction phase can be demanding both in terms of memory and com-
putational burden. These factors could make feature-based methods not
Table 3 Main characteristics of feature-based methods which have been reviewed in this work
Methods Characteristics
Time-pattern features First attempt to capture local structures
Capture temporal information
Feature space is big (O(n))
Interval features Feature extraction can be onerous
Local and global structures are captured
Histogram extraction is onerous
Bag-of-features Time-patterns not considered
Dynamic features Encode information about dynamics
Capture behavior in the frequency domain
Frequency domain features FFT/DWT are efficiently implemented
Good accuracy
Ensemble of features Feature extraction is very onerous
1994 Classification Methods
suitable for resource-constrained devices. In Table 3 the main peculiarities of each FB methods are summarized.
4.2 Distance-Based Methods
DB methods can be clustered into three groups:
• Purely distance-based: These methods are based on the direct computation
of ad hoc defined distances over raw time series.
• Reduction distance-based: Such methods are based on the computation of opportunely defined distances over a reduced representation of raw time
series.
• Parametric distance-based: With this type of DB approaches, raw signals are represented with a combination (generally linear) of basis signals (e.g.,
sine functions in the Fourier series representation). The coefficients of
different representations (parameters) are used for the computation of ad hoc defined distances.
A general picture of the dataflow for DB methods is given in Fig. 7 and the three
groups will be discussed in detail in the following of this section.
4.2.1 Purely Distance-Based Methods Purely DB methods performs the classification task by adopting a classifier that
exploits an opportunely defined distance applied to the raw time-series z. Thus, in this case, we have p � n and we refer to x as the time-series z (the map z ! x can be seen as the identity map). Here, we consider a set of variable-length
Preprocessing (LPF)
Numerosity reduction
Classification Label
Templates
Raw signal
zk Xv(t) y
FIG. 7
DB methods. Operation flow of DB classification procedures.
200 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
training time series and the corresponding label D ¼ f xi,yið Þ,i ¼ 1,…,Ng. As mentioned earlier, purely DB methods are based on the computation of a dis-
tance over the raw time series. In choosing a distance, the most straightforward approach is to adopt an Euclidean distance; however, this choice has many draw-
backs: Euclidean distance to be computed requires time series of equal lengths;
moreover, even when comparing two series of equal length, Euclidean distance can be an unfortunate choice since it does not considers common nuisance fac-
tors such as warping [90].
For the previous reasons, a more popular approach for distances is DTW [91]. DTW measures the similarity between two time series with, possibly, different
lengths by warping the time axis of one (or both) sequences to achieve align- ment between the two. DTW provides a similarity score, an index on how similar
two time series are: in order to define the similarity score, let us consider two
time series xð1Þ ¼ fxð1Þ1 ,…,x ð1Þ n g and xð2Þ ¼ fxð2Þ1 ,…,x
ð2Þ m g and let us define a grid
G ¼ ½n �½m . A warping path wp in G is a sequence wp ¼ p1,…,plð Þ with points pk ¼ ðik, jkÞ 2 G s.t.: p1 ¼ ð1,1Þ and pl ¼ ðn,mÞ ðboundary conditionsÞ pk + 1 �pk 2 fð1,0Þ,ð0,1Þ,ð1,1Þg ðwarping conditionsÞ
8kj1 � k < l. The cost of “warping” x(1) and x(2) along the warping path s is given by
dsðxð1Þ,xð2ÞÞ ¼ X ði, jÞ2s
x ð1Þ i �x
ð2Þ j
� �2 (5)
where ðxð1Þi �x ð2Þ j Þ2 is called local transformation cost. Then, the DTW similarity
score is defined by
d xð1Þ,xð2Þ � �
¼ min s
ds x ð1Þ,xð2Þ
� � (6)
Regarding the choice of the classifier, the most common choice is 1-NN com- bined with DTW (NN-DTW). Notably, even if NN is generally considered as
one of the simplest approaches to classification, in many papers NN-DTW
outperforms more sophisticated approaches when dealing with time-series
2014 Classification Methods
classification [90, 92, 93]. One of the issues of NN-DTW is its computational
cost: the DTW is O(n2) and it has to be evaluated for each training example in order find the NN. In order to alleviate the aforementioned issue, various
approximations of DTW [94–98] have been introduced: the most promising are FastDTW [95] and SDTW [97]. FastDTW adopts a multiscale approach that recursively projects a solution from a coarse resolution and refines the projected
solution. FastDTW time and space complexity are O(n); SDTW, instead, extracts
keypoint descriptors (similarly to SIFT [67], a popular approach in computer vision) and uses them to reduce complexity.
Beside approximations, several other extensions and modifications of DTW have been proposed: Keogh and Pazzani [99] proposed the derivative dynamic
time warping (DDTW), which transforms the original time series into a
first-order differences time series, in order is to avoid ill-conditioning; ill- conditioning is a common issue in DTW when dealing with noisy and long
signals due to the fact that single points of one of the compared time series
could be mapped onto a large subset of the other time series leading to poor alignments. Jeong et al. [100] proposed a penalty-based DTW (WDTW), which
adds a multiplicative weight penalty in order to penalize points with higher
phase difference between a reference point and a testing point. This has the aim to prevent minimum distance distortion caused by outliers. Other used
similarity measures are edit distance with real penalty (ERP) proposed by Chen
and Ng [101] and Chen et al. [102] and time warp edit distance (TWED) pro- posed by Marteau [103]. ERP is a variant of L1-norm, which can support local
time shifting. It can also be viewed as a variant of EDR [101] and DTW, but it is a
metric distance function. TWE distance is an elastic distance measure (effi- ciently implemented using dynamic programming) which, unlike DTW, is also
a distance. It allows warping in the time axis and combines the edit distance
(defined for time series) with Lp-norms. Marteau [103] also provides a lower bound for the TWED measure which allows to operate into down-sampled rep-
resentation spaces in order to fasten the algorithm.
As we already states, DTW is not a distance measure and this implies that it
cannot be employed with kernel methods [104], where kernel must be positive
definite. Moreover, time series of different length cannot be compared. In this context, Cuturi et al. [105] propose a new family of kernels between variable-
length time series, called alignment kernels, which consider the soft-max of the
score of all possible DTW-based alignments to consider the three of the scores of all possible alignments. However, the computation of such kernels can be
performed in quadratically, and motivated by this limitation, Cuturi [106] pro-
vides an efficient version of it.
Although the usage of kernel methods combined with global alignment allows
to consider variable-length time series and disturbances which cause time
202 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
warping, these do not consider the dynamics or patterns. Indeed, albeit the term
“dynamic” (deriving form dynamic programming), DTW has nothing which considers the dynamics of time series we want to classify. Soatto [107], among
other contributes on defining distances for nonstationary time series, also
introduces the DTW under dynamic constraints (DTWUDC), which constrains the DTW to follow a dynamical system. More in detail, in Soatto [107] it is
assumed that the data (of two time series) are outputs of dynamical models
driven by inputs that are warped versions of some common function. Thus, given two univariate time series x(1) and x(2) (i ¼ 1, 2), he assumes that there exists the dynamical model (linear in the parameters)
_hiðtÞ ¼ AhiðtÞ + BuðwiðtÞÞ xðiÞðtÞ ¼ ChiðtÞ + niðtÞ
(
where A, B, C are suitable matrices, hi are the state functions, ni(t) are noise pro- cesses, wi(t) are warping functions, u is a common input, and x
(i) is the time
series i. Then, the distance can be evaluated in two stages to fit ui(t) and then
wi(t). In the section dedicated to parametric distance-based methods we will see other methods, mainly kernel methods, on dynamical systems which capture
the dynamic essentials of the time series.
4.2.2 Reduction Distance-Based Methods As we detailed earlier, although the 1-NN-DTW classifier is remarkably difficult
to beat, it presents computational issues which prevent its usage in resource- constrained systems. Moreover, shape-based methods typically fail to provide
satisfactory results for long time series, as the weight of discriminative “local”
structures decreases. In this context, albeit various approximation of DTW was presented, the 1-NN still remains a bottleneck, as it requires the comparison
with all the training time series, mostly when the length n and the number N of the time series are large. Moreover, it also requires space to store the entire
dataset, which is unfeasible for most resource-constrained devices.
As we have seen in Section 3, data reduction techniques aim at reducing n and/ or N. The main idea of reduction distance-based methods is to reduce the time
series in a parsimonious in a new representation space and compute a suitable
distance in this space. In this part, we will discuss distance-based methods which reduce n or N or both. Before reviewing these techniques, we notice that
some of the techniques we have previously exposed may also fall into this cat-
egory. For example, this is the case of VS-BOSS, in which the time-series x is mapped into histograms and the histogram-similarity is computed in order
to classify x.
As we saw previously, symbolic representations such as SAX are very useful for
NR. In this context, the simplest classifier is the 1-NN-SAX classifier, that is the
1-NN on the space of symbolic representation endowed with the metric dSAX.
2034 Classification Methods
However, as the Euclidean distance, it is not robust to time distortions or more
simply time shifts. Moreover, as we pointed out, when N is large, using SAX approximation may not be enough. Thus, it has been crucial to find some
sparse representation of the space of training examples.
The rationale under the reduction of N is to find a subset of canonical k ≪ N examples (templates) which best describe training set without loss of informa-
tion (in the sense that they are sufficient). Fundamentally there are two direc- tions to find this templates, that is, unsupervised and supervised. In the
unsupervised approach, templates are found trough clustering techniques
regardless the task at hand. On the other hand, supervised approaches aim at finding also the most discriminative templates for the classification tasks,
that is, the templates which best represent each class. Naturally, supervised
methods are most suited for the classification task. In literature, there are two (at least) different definitions of template, that is shapelet and dictionary.
They rely on the same idea, but is tackled with different approaches.
The concept on shapelet has been developed in the recent literature [108–114]. Shapelets are subsequences of time series which are maximally (in some sense)
representative of a certain class and thus are useful to classify unlabeled time series; shapelets are maximally representative in the sense of the information
gain criteria also used to train decision trees and RFs [53].
The main advantages of using shapelets are that 1-NN with all the training instances is avoided in favor of the computation of the distance to the shapelets,
which represent each class and it is phase-invariant contrary to simpler tech-
niques such as 1-NN with Euclidean Distance (or SAX distance). On real prob- lems, the speed difference of classification can be greater than three orders of
magnitude [108]. However, despite the fast classification, the training of the
shapelets is onerous. In the first work where shapelets for classification was introduced, the worst-case scenario for the training time was O(N2n3) where
N is the number of time series in the dataset and n is the length of the longest
time series in the dataset. In order to reduce the training complexity, various extensions have been proposed. Among all, in [112], SAX is used to find sub-
optimal shapelets reducing training complexity to O(Nn2): in this case, time
series are mapped to a low-dimensional space of SAX words and shapelets are found directly on this space. Then the distance used for classification is
the dMAX defined earlier.
4.2.3 Dictionary Learning The other approach we find in the literature is called dictionary learning, whose
aim is to learn a sparse representation of the time series in terms of a basis of signals and express the input signals as a linear combination of basic elements
belonging to a set called dictionary. Before continuing we notice that we refer to
x as the time-series z, that is p ¼ n. Dictionary learning can be categorized in two
204 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
approaches: unsupervised and supervised. In order to understand their differ-
ence, in the following we briefly present the main concepts of these frameworks which are detailed for example in Refs. [115–117]. Suppose of having N uni- variate fixed-length training time-series fxðiÞ 2 ngNi¼1 associated with binary labels fyi 2 �1, + 1gNi¼1. In order to find an optimal (in the sense of mean square error) and sparse representation, through dictionary D ¼ d1,d2,…,dM�
h i of sig-
nal x we can solve the convex optimization problem
min α,D
XN i¼1
k xi �Dαi k22 + λk αi k1, s:t: k di k2 ¼ 1 (7)
where ‘1-norm is used for α since encourages sparsity [26] inducing noninfor- mative αi to be zero. Once obtain optimal α*, D*, we can solve the classification task solving
min θ
XN i¼1
Lðyi, fðxi,α ∗ ,D
∗ ,θÞÞ + λ2 k θ k22 (8)
where L( , ) and f are an opportune loss function and the predicting function, respectively, which together define a classifier and θ parameterizes the model f. Common choices of f are
1. linear models in α: f(x, α, θ) ¼wTα + b with θ ¼ w 2 k,b 2 . 2. bilinear models in x and α: xTWα + b where θ ¼ W 2 n�k,b 2 .
This approach is called unsupervised since the dictionary D* is obtained to find a sparse representation of N training time series independently of the classifica- tion task. However, as pointed by Mairal et al. [116], the dictionary found with
this procedure is optimal in the sense of reconstructive tasks but not for discrim-
inative one, that is, classification.
In order to tackle this issues, supervised dictionary learning has been intro-
duced in order to learn a discriminative dictionary exploiting the class label information. In [116], the authors propose an approximation solution of for-
mulation (Eq. 9) which learn jointly D and θ:
min D,θ
XN i¼1
LðS∗ðxi,D,θ, �yiÞ�S ∗ðxi,D,θ,yiÞÞ + λ2 k θ k22 (9)
where S ∗ðxi,D,θ,yiÞ ¼ minαLðyi, fðxi,αi,D,θÞÞ + λ0 k xi �Dαik2 + λ1k αi k1. Then
the classified label ŷ of a new time series xnew is given by
ŷ ¼ arg min y2f�1;+ 1g
S ∗ðxnew,D,θ,yÞ
2054 Classification Methods
Other supervised approaches are discriminative KSVD [118], task-driven dictio-
nary learning [117], Fisher discrimination dictionary learning [119], and label- consistent KSVD (LC-KSVD) [120, 121]. However, all these approaches are not
robust to time-shifts or general deformations as it uses the Euclidean distance.
In order to overcome this issue, in [122] a family of Gaussian elastic matching kernels was introduced. They use DTW, ERP, and TWED distances to compute
the Gaussian kernel
Kðxð1Þ,xð2ÞÞ ¼ exp �k x ð1Þ �xð2Þk2
2
However, the Gaussian elastic matching kernel cannot be guaranteed to be a
positive definite symmetric (PDS) kernel. Thus, proper modifications have
to be applied in order to remove the non-PDS part. Although the attempts to embed DTW distance to dictionary learning, several issues such as nonposi-
tive semidefiniteness of “DTW Gaussian kernel” can compromise the robust-
ness of results. Moreover, these approach is computationally expensive.
Recently, in view of these considerations, another sparse representation
approach of a dictionary has been considered. It relies on the well-known
notion of centroid for clustering algorithms. Each centroid is considered as the class representative and thus, if the classification problem involves M clas-
ses, M representative time series will be selected. However, DTW does not
induce a proper definition of mean and thus the literature attempted to find a definition which is consistent with DTW. The most promising definition
was given by Petitjean et al. [123, 124] and it was called DTW Barycenter aver-
aging (DBA). Roughly speaking, it is based on an expectation-maximization scheme and multiple sequence alignment (commonly used in computational
biology). This method is very effective as it allows to apply NR reducing N and
DTW approximation to speed-up the single comparison. The difference between this approach and dictionary learning is that the “centroid” could
not appertain to the dataset. Moreover, this method is supervised in some sense
as it exploits the class label information by evaluating the centroid for each class.
4.2.4 Parametric Distance-Based Methods Parametric distance-based methods compute the distance onto a reduced para-
metric representation of the signal. In this case, each time-series z is represented
by a representation x 2 p. The most common procedure for the training phase is as follows:
• Find a parametric representation of all the training time series. The most used techniques are DWT, DFT stopped at a given coefficient order.
• Finda “centroid” ormore generally a representative(template) ofeach class.
206 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
Once obtained the templates for each class, then the classification task is just
given by an 1-NN classifier on the representatives x(•).
These simple methods suffer from various issues as they do not care of the
intrinsic “dynamics” information of the signal. This issue has been tackled, mainly, by the computer vision literature [125, 126] and by Cuturi and Doucet
[127] and Chen et al. [128] in a general context. Bissacco et al. [126] proposes
family of kernels for dynamical systems based on the Binet-Cauchy kernel [129] for recognizing dynamic textures. Bissacco et al. [126] extends the work
of Vishwanathan et al. [125] considering phase information, inputs or initial
conditions. Essentially, these two works rely on a probabilistic modeling of the time series to define a kernel: in order to compare two time series, first,
the dynamic behavior of each time series is learned by learning the parameters
of a given state space dynamical systems, and then, the kernel is defined as a kernel between these two sets of parameters. In other words, the distance is
computed over the parameters of the fitted dynamical systems. We will see later
that a similar approach is followed by other classification methods. The work of Cuturi and Doucet [127] introduced the Autoregressive Kernels that are based on
the vector autoregressive model (VAR): every multivariate (q-dimensional)
time-series z 2 q�n is represented by the feature L(θ;z) ¼ pθ(z), which is the likelihood function (it is a function of θ for a fixed sample z), modeled by a VAR model. Given a measurable space X and a model (i.e., a parameterized family of distribution on X of the form {pθ, θ 2Θ}), the kernel K of two time-series z(1) and z(2) is defined by
Kðzð1Þ,zð2ÞÞ ¼ Z θ2Θ
pθðzð1ÞÞpθðzð2ÞÞωðdθÞ
where, in this case, ω(dθ) is the matrix-normal inverse-Wishart prior. Moreover, Cuturi and Doucet [127] have shown that this kernel can be easily computed
even when q ≫ n due to the fact that it does not resort to the actual estimation of a density. Indeed, all the kernels defined in [125–127] rely on a probabilistic parametric modeling of time series, but the computation of the Autoregressive
Kernel avoids the two-step approach presented previously. Finally, Chen et al. [128] presents a model-metric colearning (MMCL) methodology, which differ-
ently from the works on [125–127], present a kernel based on nonlinear dynamical systems, named echo state networks (ESN) [130, 131]. For each time series, an ESN-model is trained and the model parameters θ are used to compute an opportune distance, also using kernel methods. For other recent
application of ESN and its extension using liquid state machines (LSM), see [132–134]. We can notice that all the methods presented in this section can be seen as feature-based models. Indeed, in [127] the profile likelihood and
in [125, 126, 128, 133, 134] the parameters of the dynamical systems can be seen as features.
2074 Classification Methods
Although accounting the “dynamics” information using the kernel methods
may lead to superior accuracy with respect to the simple parametric distance- based methods, they are more computationally expensive (as they requires
the feature extraction phase and the computation of the kernel). This fact would
favor the usage of simpler methods which avoid the computation of the kernel. In the context of power systems, simple distance-based methods could be suf-
ficient to capture the difference of signals, to identify, for example, anomalies.
Finally, in Table 4 a summary of the most important characteristics of DB methods is presented.
Table 4 Main characteristics of distance-based methods that have been reviewed in this work
Methods Characteristics
Purely DB DTW Invariant to time-warpings Complexity is O(n2)
DTW approximations Complexity is O(n)
DDTW DTW on the first-derivative signal Reduces pathological alignments
WDTW Filtering with logistic weight function Favor matching points located in a neighborhood Reduces pathological alignments
ERP Supports local time shifting Metric distance function
TWED Elastic distance measure Edit distance + Lp norm
Alignment kernels DTW-based alignment kernel
DTWUDC DTW + dynamic constraints
Red-DB SAX Reduce into symbolic space
1-NN-SAX SAX representation + SAX distance Suitable for simple signals α and p must be tuned Prediction is O(N)
1-NN-SAX with k templates Prediction is OðM � Þ
1-NN-SFA Fourier representation More adherence to the shape w.r.t. SAX Finer resolution with total recomputation
Shapelets Shift-invariant templates Training is O(N2n3)
Dictionary learning Learn a sparse representation In general use Euclidean distance Chen et al. [122] add kernel representation
Continued
Table 4 Main characteristics of distance-based methods that have been reviewed in this work Continued
Methods Characteristics
DBA DTW centroids are defined and used as templates
Par-DB 1-NN-DWT Better than DFT to handle nonstationarity Good frequency and temporal resolution
Binet-Cauchy kernels Kernel to embed dynamic behavior Rely on a probabilistic parametric modeling of time series
Autoregressive kernels Easily computed even when q ≫ n Rely on a probabilistic parametric modeling of time series AR model
MMCL Kernel based on nonlinear dynamical systems (ESN)
LSM Distance on LSM parameters
208 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
4.3 Methods Comparison
In Table 5 we summarize the general characteristics of FB and DB methods.
Moreover, in Table 6 we present a general overview of the complexity of the
methods reviewed in this work and we provide an indication of whether they
Table 5 Main Characteristics of Feature and Distance-based Time-Series Classification Approaches
Class of Methods Characteristics
Feature extraction can be onerous
Difficult to define a “distance” between classes
FB Easy interpretation of results
Purely DB Complexity grows at least linearly with n
Kernel-based methods can be onerous
Distance has to be chosen tailored to the problem
Comparisons with all N training examples (best case: O(Nn))
Distance computed in the reduce space
Red-DB Reduce numerosity of time series
Par-DB Distance is computed over the space of parameters
Kernel-based methods can be onerous
Table 6 Categorization of time-series methods
Methods Complexity Type
FB Time-pattern features O(n), low if p and n low Remote
Interval features O(n) � O(n2), low if p and n low Remote Bag of features High (O(Nn) � O(n)) Centralized Dynamic features High, low with simple AR models Remote
Frequency domain features
Low Remote
Purely DB DTW High (O(Nn2)) Centralized
DTW approximations High (lower bound O(Nn)) Centralized
DDTW High (O(Nn2)) Centralized
WDTW High (O(Nn2)) Centralized
ERP High (O(Nn2)) Centralized
TWED High (O(Nn2)) Centralized
Alignment kernels High Centralized
Red-DB DTWUDC High (DTW + dynamic model) Centralized
1-NN-SAX High (O(Nn)) Centralized
1-NN-SAX with k templates
Low (O(kn)) Remote
1-NN-SFA High O(Nn) Centralized (RWT)
Shapelets Low (reduction methods) Remote
Dictionary learning O(k) (cardinality of dictionary) Remote
DBA Low (O(n2) � O(n)), DTW approx Remote Par-DB 1-NN-DWT High, low with templates Centralized
(RWT)
Binet-Cauchy kernels High Centralized
Autoregressive kernels High (O(N(n2p3))), p: AR order Centralized
MMCL High Centralized
LSM High Centralized
Notes: Methods as DTW which admits variable-length timeseries has complexity which depends on the lengths (n and m of two timeseries). However, for the sake of simplicity with consider only n assuming that m is very similar to n (very common in real scenarios). RWT, remote with template.
2094 Classification Methods
are suitable for remote or centralized tasks. With “remote” we refer to classifica-
tion tasks than can be delivered without any kind of information coming from
other nodes or locations, while with “centralized” we refer to algorithms or framework that can be executed in a central system that is aware of all nodes
data. Notice that in doing the distinction remote/centralized, we assume that
the training phase is carried out offline and thus in Table 6 only classification complexity is concerned.
Table 7 Categorization of time-series classification methods
Methods References
FB Time-pattern features [60–62]
Interval features [63–66]
Bag of features [68–76]
Dynamic features [82–84]
Frequency domain features [85–87]
Ensemble of features [89]
Purely DB Miscellaneous [90, 92, 93]
DTW [91]
DTW approximations [94–98]
DDTW [99]
WDTW [100]
ERP [101, 102]
TWED [103]
Alignment kernels [105, 106]
DTWUDC [107]
Red-DB 1-NN-SAX [47, 48]
1-NN-SAX with templates [135]
1-NN-SFA [50]
Shapelets [108–114]
Dictionary learning [115–117]
DBA [123, 124]
Par-DB 1-NN-DWT [136]
Binet-Cauchy kernels [125, 126, 129]
Autoregressive kernels [105, 127]
MMCL [128]
LSM [132–134]
210 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
Finally in Table 7, we summarize the references that correspond to each group
of methods.
5 APPLICATIONS
In Table 8 we provide a list of some power-system applications whose issues
have been addressed adopting some of the methodologies presented in this chapter. As can be seen, most of the applications concern event, anomaly
and FD problems, exploiting FB techniques, which appear of an immediate
application.
Table 8 Power-system applications
Year Refs. Method Methodology Data Application
2016 [2] Kernel PCA FB PMU FDI
Partial SVM
2016 [23] mRmR FB PMU FDI
Ensemble of bundle classifier
SVM
2016 [137] DFT, DWT, FDST, PCA, Shapelet FB PMU FDI
1-NN, SVM
2016 [13] DTW, MDTW Purely DB AMI FD
AM
2016 [138] Decision tree, SVM FB AMI TD
2016 [139] DWT (for preprocessing) FB PMU ND
Gaussian mixture models
Parzen density estimator
k-means clustering, k-NN
Standard SVDD
SVDD with negative examples
2016 [140] Semisupervised SVM FB PMU AD
Adaboost, Multiple kernel learning
2015 [141] Wavelet Par-DB PMU AD/ED
2015 [142] DWT, neural networks FB PMU Event/FDI
2015 [143] Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system FB PMU FD
Neural networks, SVM
2015 [144] One class classifier DB Smart sensors FDI
2014 [12] Hidden Markov Models (HMM) FB PMU FD
2014 [145] Clustering, outlier detection FB Meteo
Recursive feature elimination
Multiple linear regression, ARIMA
Support vector regression, k-NN Prediction
RF, Boosting tree
MARS
Ensemble of methods
2014 [146] Naive Bayes FB PMU
Rule induction (OneR, NNge, JRipper) FD
Decision tree learning (RFs)
Binary classification (SVM) AD
Boosting (Adaboost)
2013 [147] Iterative Hilbert Huang Transform Red-DB PMU Monitoring
SAX
Continued
2115 Applications
Table 8 Power-system applications Continued
Year Refs. Method Methodology Data Application
2012 [148] SVM FB PMU FDI
One class SVM (semisupervised)
2009 [17] LS-SVM, DWT FB PMU FDI
2008 [149] DWT (for feature extraction) Par-DB PMU FD
2006 [16] SVM, neural networks FB PMU FDI
2006 [22] LR, neural networks FB Fault logs FDI
Meteo
2001 [21] DWT Par-DB PMU FDI
Notes: A list of applications in the field of power systems is given, together with the main adopted time-series classification techniques. In “Application” column, the acronyms AD, TD, ND stand for anomaly, theft, and novelty detections.
212 CHAPTER 9: Time-Series Classification Methods
6 CONCLUDING REMARKS
Surfing through these methodologies applied to the power systems time series highlights the synergy between big data analysis and cyber-physical systems
within the smart paradigm. These methodologies have paved a golden way
toward new frontiers in scientific innovation and quality of service, leveraging continuous technological advances. Nonetheless, still some issues remains to
be solved and to gain a main role in industrial and academic research.
A first fundamental aspect regard the control and architecture at all scales, meaning that through the pervasive monitoring of the systems the aim is
to reach a full knowledge of the whole power system pipeline (from the first energy transformation to the final user) and at all levels (from the wide area
grid network to the residential installations): on the one side this means even
higher volumes and complexity of the data, while on the other it calls for the interoperability of the systems, the buzzword in the world of Internet
of Things.
Also, it appears how the information and communication technologies, the cyber part, have gained a predominant role with respect to the physical coun-
terpart, leveraging big data so as to offer new services and an increased perfor-
mance of the systems: conversely, this ICT-mediated technology opens new scenarios in the field of faults, malicious behaviors, and more in general cyber-
security maintenance [150]. Concurrently, the governance of data and
the privacy concerns need to be taken into account in this context, so as to guarantee the accurate and continuous knowledge of plants and behaviors
without being invasive through the definition of policies of information
management [151].
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[147] M.J. Afroni, D. Sutanto, D. Stirling, Analysis of nonstationary power-quality waveforms using iterative Hilbert Huang transform and SAX algorithm, IEEE Trans. Power Delivery 28 (4)
(2013) 2134–2144.
[148] N. Shahid, S.A. Aleem, I.H. Naqvi, N. Zaffar, Support vector machine based fault detection &
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pp. 1526–1531.
[149] N.I. Elkalashy, M. Lehtonen, H.A. Darwish, A.-M.I. Taalab, M.A. Izzularab, DWT-based detec-
tion and transient power direction-based location of high-impedance faults due to leaning
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[150] L. Langer, F. Skopik, P. Smith, M. Kammerstetter, From old to new: assessing cybersecurity
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jup.2017.01.003.
- Time-Series Classification Methods: Review and Applications to Power Systems Data
- Introduction
- Contribution
- Notation
- The Classification Problem
- Classification Methods Taxonomy
- Computational Issues
- Data Sources
- Dimensionality Reduction
- DR Techniques Review
- Numerosity Reduction
- NR Techniques Review
- Classification Methods
- Feature-Based Methods
- Metrics-Based Approaches
- Occurrence Counting Approaches
- Dynamics-Based Approaches
- Distance-Based Methods
- Purely Distance-Based Methods
- Reduction Distance-Based Methods
- Dictionary Learning
- Parametric Distance-Based Methods
- Methods Comparison
- Applications
- Concluding Remarks
- References
Book Chapters for Ideas/Contributors_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-Power-Systems.pdf
Contributors
Reza Arghandeh UC Berkeley and Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States Mohammad Babakmehr Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, United States
Ricardo J. Bessa INESC Technology and Science—INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal
Saverio Bolognani Automatic Control Laboratory ETH Z€urich, Z€urich, Switzerland Angelo Cenedese University of Padova, Padova, Italy
Michael Chertkov Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States
Deepjyoti Deka Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States Roy Dong University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States
Feng Gao Tsinghua University Energy Internet Research Institute, Beijing, China
Madeleine Gibescu Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands Bri-Mathias Hodge National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, United States
Gabriela Hug ETH Zurich, Power Systems Laboratory, Zurich, Switzerland
Jeffrey S. Katz IBM, Hartford, CT, United States Stephan Koch ETH Zurich; Adaptricity AG, c/o ETH Zurich, Power Systems Laboratory, Zurich,
Switzerland
Hanif Livani University of Nevada Reno, Reno, NV, United States Mehrdad Majidi University of Nevada, Reno, NV, United States
John D. McDonald GE Energy Connections-Grid Solutions, Atlanta, GA, United States
Sadaf Moaveninejad Polytechnic University of Milan, Milan, Italy Elena Mocanu Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Ingo Nader Unbelievable Machine, Vienna, Austria
Behzad Najafi Polytechnic University of Milan, Milan, Italy Phuong H. Nguyen Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Lillian J. Ratliff University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
Fabio Rinaldi Polytechnic University of Milan, Milan, Italy Marcelo G. Simoes Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, United States
Matthias Stifter AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center of Energy, Vienna, Austria
Carol L. Stimmel Manifest Mind, LLC, Canaan, NY, United States Gian Antonio. Susto University of Padova, Padova, Italy
Akin Tascikaraoglu Mugla Sitki Kocman University, Mugla, Turkey
Matteo Terzi University of Padova, Padova, Italy Andreas Ulbig ETH Zurich; Adaptricity AG, c/o ETH Zurich, Power Systems Laboratory, Zurich,
Switzerland
xi
xii Contributors
Yang Weng Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States Rui Yang National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, United States
Yingchen Zhang National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, United States
Jie Zhang University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, United States Yuxun Zhou UC Berkeley and Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
Thierry Zufferey ETH Zurich, Power Systems Laboratory, Zurich, Switzerland
- Contributors
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- Copyright
Book Chapters for Ideas/Front-Matter_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-Power-Systems.pdf
Big Data Application in Power Systems
Big Data Application in Power Systems
Edited by
Reza Arghandeh Assistant Prof. in Electrical Engineering,
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Florida State University
Yuxun Zhou PhD candidate, Department of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley
- Front Matter
Book Chapters for Ideas/Index_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-Power-Systems.pdf
Index
Note: Page numbers followed by f indicate figures, t indicate tables, and “b” indicate boxes.
A ACS-F1 dataset. See Appliance
Consumption Signatures- Fribourg 1 (ACS-F1) dataset
Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), 7, 58, 245–247
AE-ELM. See Autoencoder extreme learning machines (AE-ELM)
ALM. See Appliance load monitoring (ALM)
Almanac of Minutely Power dataset (AMPds), 394
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), 6–7
AMI. See Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI)
Apache Hadoop, 229 Apache Spark, 67, 227, 229 Appliance Consumption Signatures-
Fribourg 1 (ACS-F1) dataset, 394
Appliance load monitoring (ALM) ILM, 378 NILM (see Nonintrusive load
monitoring (NILM)) ARRA. See American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Asset risk management and optimized
repair-rehab-replace (ARMOR3), 49
AsterMapReduce in-database processing
CalcEventsLongFormat function, 340
evaluation setup, 340 MeterMinMax function, 340,
341t
system configuration, 339, 339t Autoencoder extreme learning
machines (AE-ELM), 231
B Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS), 63 BackEnergy2, 32 Bag-of-features (BoF) framework,
195–196 Bag-of-SFA-symbols (BoSS), 197 Bag-of-words (BoW) technique,
195–196 Basic pursuit de-noising (BPDN), 163 Bayesian approach, 389 BERkeley EneRgy Disaggregation
Dataset (BERDS), 394 Big data and analytics applications, 59 architecture, 59, 59f cognitive computing, 51–52 data storage, 45 in electric power distribution
utility, 45, 46f PMUs, 45 renewable energy, 47–48 smart grid zero projects, 45 weather, 54–55
Big data-driven solar forecasting hours- to day-ahead NWP-based
solar forecasting, 351 minutes- to 2-hour-ahead sky
imaging-based solar forecasting, 352, 352f
Big data-driven wind forecasting hours- to day-ahead NWP-based
wind forecasting, 346–347, 346–347f
minutes- to 2-hour-ahead machine- learning-based wind forecasting, 347–349, 348f
WIND toolkit, 349–350, 349f BoF framework. See Bag-of-features
(BoF) framework BoSS. See Bag-of-SFA-symbols (BoSS) Building-Level fully-labeled dataset
for Electricity Disaggregation (BLUED) dataset, 393
Burlington Electrics case, 33–34
C California independent system
operator (CAISO), 226 CCHP system. See Combined cooling
heating and power (CCHP) system
CEP. See Complex event processing (CEP)
Chow-Liu algorithm, 283, 288–289 Cloud-based software program, 255 Cloud computing, 44 Cloud engine, 64–65 Clustering algorithm
cluster assignment step, 112–113 cluster centroids, 112–113 cluster update step, 112–113 daily patterns, 115–117, 116f, 118f features extraction, 113–115, 114f initialization phase, 112–113 k-means algorithm, 112–113, 112f objective, 111–112 visualization tool
grid operator, 117–119 Leaflet based visualization tool,
117–119
445
446 Index
Clustering algorithm (Continued)
of metered loads, 119–122, 119f,
121f
Cognitive computing, 51–52 Collaborative filtering, 326 COMBED. See Commercial Building
Energy Dataset (COMBED) Combined cooling heating and power
(CCHP) system data-driven method, 69 efficiency, 69–70 electricity, heating, and cooling
production, 70, 71f mechanism of, 70, 71f multiform energy system, 69–70,
70f primary movers, 69 Python, 71–72 WebSocket protocol, 71–72
Commercial Building Energy Dataset (COMBED), 395
Complex event processing (CEP), 65–69, 68f
Compressive sensing-sparse recovery (CS-SR) techniques
mathematical modeling, 161–163 PD pattern recognition
maximum discharge, 173 mean discharge, 173 on-line monitoring schemes, 171 PRPD, 171 rate of PD repetition, 173 schematic diagram, 173, 174f SRC equation system, 173, 175f
in smart grids DSSE, 165–168, 167f fault location, 168–171, 169t,
170f linear DC power flow model, 164 monitoring and control issues,
164–165 POI-SRP formulation, 164 power line outage identification,
164 SOV, 164
sparse outage vector recovery problem, 160–161
Conditional restricted Boltzmann machine (CRBMs)
aggregated active power measurements, 138, 138f
contrastive divergence, 131–132 general architecture, 129–130, 130f
inference, 130–131 visible and hidden binary layers,
129–130 Continuous variable device, 381 Contrastive divergence (CD),
131–132 Controlled On/Off Loads Library
(COOLL) dataset, 396 CPS. See Cyber-physical system (CPS) CRBMs. See Conditional restricted
Boltzmann machine (CRBMs) Crowdsourcing, 18 CS-SR techniques. See Compressive
sensing-sparse recovery (CS- SR) techniques
Cyber-physical system (CPS), 77–79 Cybersecurity
Burlington Electrics case, 33–34 common exploits in utility system,
36t cyberattack in Ukraine, 31–32 digital network
analytical models, 38 NERC CIP standards, 38 pattern-detection algorithms, 38 PbD framework, 39 situational awareness, 39
in electric power systems, 45–47 financial impacts at Saudi Aramco,
32 firewall, 31 high-level grid-specific scenarios,
37 2016 Human Factor cybersecurity
assessment, 31 NIST cybersecurity framework,
45–47 Pearl Harbor level of attack, 37 practices in utility industry, 34–35 situational intelligence, 35–36, 35f Stuxnet, 35
Cyberterrorism, 30–31
D DA. See Distribution automation
(DA) Danish Energy Association’s flexible
clearinghouse (FleCH), 47 Data concentrators (DCs), 108 Dataport database, 395 Data-producing devices, 5 DBA. See DTW Barycenter averaging
(DBA)
DB methods. See Distance-based (DB) methods
DBNs. See Deep belief network (DBNs)
DCs. See Data concentrators (DCs) Deep belief network (DBNs),
140–141, 141f, 144–146, 149, 149f
Deep learning methods, 237 ANNs
aggregated active power prediction, 136, 137f
error comparison, 138, 138f multiple layers of hidden neurons, 127
prediction error, 136, 137t CRBMs aggregated active power prediction, 136, 137f
contrastive divergence, 131–132 error comparison, 138, 138f general architecture, 129–130, 130f
inference, 130–131 prediction error, 136, 137t visible and hidden binary layers, 129–130
FCRBMs aggregated active power prediction, 136, 137f
binary hidden layer, 132–133 error comparison, 138, 138f general architecture, 132, 132f inference, 134 joint probability distribution, 133
learning and update rules, 134–135
mathematical details, 132 prediction error, 136, 137t real valued history layer, 132–133
real valued visible layer, 132–133 style and features layers, 132–133 total energy function, 133
high-order restricted Boltzmann machine architectures, 127, 128f
HMM, 128–129 RBMs, 127, 144–145 RNN aggregated active power prediction, 136, 137f
447Index
error comparison, 138, 138f prediction error, 136, 137t
supervised energy prediction physical principles, 128–129 statistical methods, 128–129 temporal energy consumption
prediction, 127–128 SVM aggregated active power
prediction, 136, 137f error comparison, 138, 138f prediction error, 136, 137t
unsupervised energy prediction deep belief network, 144–146 numerical results, 146–153 RL methods (see Reinforcement
learning (RL) methods) transfer learning approaches,
139, 140f unlabeled data problem, 141
Demand and renewable energy generation forecasting, 250–253
Demand response (DR) programs, 236–237
advanced computing techniques, 247–248
advanced energy demand forecasting approaches, 245
AMI, 245–247 centralized SCADA, 246 client-server data network, 246 cloud-based software program, 255 demand and renewable energy
generation forecasting, 250–253
distributed data analysis methods, 255
dynamic pricing, 253–254 electric load classification, 249–250 energy consumption behavior
assessment, 248 HAN applications, 246–247 load serving entities, 244 M2M communication concept,
255 multistage storage architecture, 247 NAN applications, 246–247
Demand-side flexibility, 236–237 Demand-side management (DSM) Denial-of-service attack, 31–32 Dictionary learning, 203–205 Digital signatures, 33–34
Direct load control (DLC) capabilities, 432 control law, 433, 434f data minimization principle, 429 FIP principle, 429 model simulations, 435–436,
436–438f objective, 431–432 privacy analysis, 436–439, 438f sampling rates, 428–430 thermostatically controlled load
model, 430–431 DiSC simulation framework, 294 Distance-based (DB) methods characteristics, 207–208t dictionary learning, 203–205 dynamic time warping, 185 1-nearest neighbor classifier, 185 operation flow diagram, 200f parametric distance-based
methods, 205–207 purely DB methods, 199–202 reduction DB methods, 202–203
Distributed topology test advantage, 293 constructive proof, 290–291, 291f correlation-based approach, 289 matrix adjoint, 292–293 minimal equivalent resistive grid,
290 minimal interleaved graph,
289–290 node depth, 290 triad, 289, 293 voltage covariance matrix, 291–292
Distribution automation (DA), 7 Distribution grids average fractional errors, 275–277,
276f conditional independence-based
tests, 263 fault detection, 263 with Gaussian loads, 263 line flow measurements, 263 maximum likelihood estimator,
263 monitoring and situational
awareness, 230–232 operational edge set, 275–277 PF model, 265–266 predictive control and
management, 232–233 radial structure, 264–265
smart controllable devices, 261–262
spanning tree-based learning algorithm, 263–264
topology estimation, 262–263 topology learning with full observation, 270–271 with missing data, 271–274 using terminal node data, 275b
tree-structured graphical models, 264
voltage magnitude properties, 266–270, 268f
Distribution system operators (DSOs), 223–224
asset management, 233–234 grid management functions, 224 high-resolution measurements,
107–108 and TSO cooperation, 229–230
Distribution system state estimation (DSSE), 165–168, 167f
DLC. See Direct load control (DLC) DNP3 protocol, 22–23 DRED. See Dutch Residential Energy
Dataset (DRED) DR programs. See Demand response
(DR) programs DSOs. See Distribution system
operators (DSOs) DSSE. See Distribution system state
estimation (DSSE) DTW Barycenter averaging (DBA),
205 Dutch Residential Energy Dataset
(DRED), 395 Dynamic pricing/real-time pricing,
253–254
E Electricity Consumption and
Occupancy (ECO) dataset, 395 Electricity markets, 224–225,
234–236 Electricity price forecasting, 307–308 ELM algorithm. See Extreme learning
machine (ELM) algorithm EMS. See Energy management system
(EMS) End-to-end system, 5 Energy disaggregation algorithms.
See also Nonintrusive load monitoring (NILM)
448 Index
Energy disaggregation algorithms (Continued)
ACS-F1 dataset, 394 advantages, 397 AMPds, 394 BERDS, 394 BLUED dataset, 393 COMBED, 395 COOLL dataset, 396 customer segmentation, 399 Dataport database, 395 demand side response, 400 DRED, 395 ECO dataset, 395 energy demand prediction, 400 energy-related recommendations,
398 FHMM, 386 goals of, 409 GREEND dataset, 395 Household Electricity Survey
dataset, 393 iAWE dataset, 394 MFDs detection, 398 occupancy monitoring, 398 open-source tools
metadata, 396 NILMTK, 397
PLAID, 395 REDD, 393 REFIT dataset, 396 Smart*, 393 supervised methods off-line training method,
386 on-line approach, 386 optimization method, 390 pattern recognition method,
387–390 SustData dataset, 395 Tracebase dataset, 394 UK-DALE dataset, 394 unsupervised algorithms, 390–391 WHITED dataset, 396
EnergyIP tool, 256–257 Energy management system (EMS),
186–188, 187f Eventless algorithms, 390 Extreme learning machine (ELM)
algorithm 8-hour-ahead forecasting, 368,
368f performance, 367t
16 hour-ahead forecasting, 367 sliding window test, 366–367 state estimator, 365–366, 365f
F Factored conditional restricted
Boltzmann machine (FCRBMs)
aggregated active power measurements, 138, 138f
binary hidden layer, 132–133 general architecture, 132, 132f inference, 134 joint probability distribution, 133 learning and update rules,
134–135 mathematical details, 132 real valued history layer, 132–133 real valued visible layer, 132–133 style and features layers, 132–133 total energy function, 133
Factorial hidden Markov models (FHMM), 386
Fair Information Practice (FIP) principle, 429
Fault location in distribution and transmission networks
fault distance ratio, 171 k-nearest neighbor technique,
168–169 nonzero values, 168–171 simulation results, 169, 169t for single fault cases, 171, 172t substitution theorem, 169–170,
170f voltage sag value measurement, 168
FCRBMs. See Factored conditional restricted Boltzmann machine (FCRBMs)
Feature-based (FB) methods characteristics, 199t, 208t design matrix, 185 dynamics-based approaches,
197–199 feature extraction procedure, 185 learning phase, 185 metrics-based approaches, 193–195 occurrence counting approaches,
195–197 operation flow diagram, 193–194,
193f FHMM. See Factorial hidden Markov
models (FHMM)
Finite state machines (FSM) devices, 380–381
FIP principle. See Fair Information Practice (FIP) principle
Fisher’s Iris dataset, 112–113, 112f Fit-and-forget approach, 281 Frame relay access devices (FRADs),
24 FSM devices. See Finite state machines
(FSM) devices Functional data path, 12–13, 13f
G Gaussian process-based method
embedding distance-based correlation, 357
embedding periodic pattern, 358 embedding piecewise linear
pattern, 358 error domain analysis, 359, 360f personalized demand forecasting
algorithm, 356 of residential customers loads, 356,
357f simulations, 358, 359f
Global models (GMs), 345 GREEND dataset, 395 Grid modernization, 6 Grid Operations and Planning
Technology Integrated Capabilities Suite (Grid OPTICS), 47–48
Grid topology identification bus impedance matrix, 284 correlation analysis methods,
282–283 distributed topology test
advantage, 293 constructive proof, 290–291, 291f
correlation-based approach, 289 matrix adjoint, 292–293 minimal equivalent resistive grid, 290
minimal interleaved graph, 289–290
node depth, 290 triad, 289, 293 voltage covariance matrix, 291–292
field measurements, 282–283 mathematical analysis, 283 minimum-cost spanning tree, 283
449Index
nonlinear power flow equations, 284
numerical experiments concentration matrix, 295–297,
295f, 297f covariance matrix, 294–295,
295f DiSC simulation framework, 294 distributed statistical hypothesis,
297 error rate, 297, 298f power profiles, 294, 294f real power measurement data,
296–297, 296f steady state, 283–284 topology learning tools, 283 voltage correlation analysis Chow-Liu algorithm, 288–289 concentration matrix, 288 covariance matrix, 285 equivalent resistive grid, 286 inverse of covariance matrix,
287–288 T voltage measurements, 288 uncorrelated power demands,
285 uniform power factor, 286 uniform X/R ratio, 285
Grizzly Steppe, Russian hacker group, 33–34
H Hadoop distributed file system
(HDFS), 59 Hadoop’s security, 61 Hart’s approach, 387–388 HDFS. See Hadoop distributed file
system (HDFS) Hidden Markov model (HMM),
84–87, 128–129 High performance computing (HPC) BaaS, 63 IaaS, 62, 62f IoT, 63–64, 64f microservice architecture, 62 monolithic architecture, 62 PaaS, 63 SaaS, 63 for smart grid, 64–65
HMM. See Hidden Markov model (HMM)
Home area networks (HANs), 246–247
Household Electricity Survey dataset, 393
HPC. See High performance computing (HPC)
2016 Human Factor cybersecurity assessment, 31
Human interoperability, 19 Hybrid HVAC transmission lines fault parameters and sensitivity
analysis, 318 faulty location errors, 317–318,
318f Gaussian noises, 317 identification errors, 317, 317f single-ended traveling wave-based
fault location algorithm, 315–316f, 316–317
state-of-the-art traveling wave fault location, 315
I IaaS. See Infrastructure-as-a-Service
(IaaS) iAWE dataset. See Indian data for
Ambient Water and Electricity Sensing (iAWE) dataset
IBM Watson cognitive processing, 52 ICT. See Information and
communications technology (ICT)
IEDs. See Intelligent electronic devices (IEDs)
ILM. See Intrusive load monitoring (ILM)
Indian data for Ambient Water and Electricity Sensing (iAWE) dataset, 394
Information and communications technology (ICT), 6–8
Information gain criteria, 203 Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), 62,
62f Integrated Volt/VAr Control (IVVC),
11 Intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) data maps, 14 in distribution system, 8 nonoperational data, 8–11, 9–10f ondemand/event-triggered data,
12 operational data, 8–9, 8f, 10f, 11 substation integration and
automation, 11–12, 12f
Internal and external stakeholders, 4–5
Intrusive load monitoring (ILM), 378 IVVC. See Integrated Volt/VAr Control
(IVVC)
K Kerberos, 61 Ketchikan Public Utilities (KPU),
21–23 KillDisk, 31–32 k-means clustering, 88–90, 112–113,
112f, 249–250 Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, 147–149 KPU. See Ketchikan Public Utilities
(KPU)
L Lambda architecture, 60–61, 60f Lazy-learning algorithms,
187–188 Limited area models (LAMs),
345 Linear coupled power flow (LC-PF)
model, 265–266 Load serving entities (LSEs), 244
M Machine learning (ML)
feature extraction, 95 feature selection
embedded method, 97, 98t filter method, 97 interstream features, 100–101,
100t, 102f μPMU measurement data, 97–99,
98f raw measurement data
preprocessing, 95, 96f single stream features extraction,
99–100 wrapper method, 97
hyperparameter selection Bayesian optimization, 94–95 bias-variance trade-off, 92, 93f cross-validation, 92–94, 94f decision tree example, 90 generalization bound, 91–92 kernel function, 90 model selection problem, 94 regularization path algorithms,
94
450 Index
Machine learning (ML) (Continued) integration with PMU monitoring
and SCADA system, 77, 78f multitask learning, 102–103 multiview learning, 103 semisupervised learning, 102 supervised learning (see Supervised
learning) unsupervised learning
goal, 87 k-means clustering, 88–90 principle component analysis,
87–88
Machine-to-machine (M2M)
communication concept, 255 Malfunctioning devices (MFDs)
detection, 398 MapReduce functions
AsterMapReduce in-database processing (see AsterMapReduce in- database processing)
distributed data processing, 327, 327f
PostgreSQL (see PostgreSQL) program code, 338–339
Markov decision process (MDPs), 142 Message passing interface (MPI), 229 MFDs detection. See Malfunctioning
devices (MFDs) detection Minimum weight spanning tree-based
topology learning, 271b, 273b ML. See Machine learning (ML) MongoDB, 61 Multitask learning, 102–103 Multiview learning, 103
N National Institute of Standards and
Technology’s (NIST) cybersecurity framework, 45–47
1-nearest neighbor classifier (1-NN), 185
Neighborhood area networks (NAN), 246–247
NERC CIP standards, 38 NILM. See Nonintrusive load
monitoring (NILM) NILMTK. See Nonintrusive load
monitoring toolkit (NILMTK) NIST cybersecurity framework.
See National Institute of
Standards and Technology’s (NIST) cybersecurity framework
Nonintrusive load monitoring (NILM). See also Energy disaggregation algorithms
accuracy metrics, 391–393 aggregate device model, 415–416 appliance classification
based on corresponding load
characteristics, 381, 382t based on operational states,
380–381 data acquisition, 378–379,
381–383 device signatures active and reactive power draw,
383 macroscopic signatures, 384 microscopic signatures, 385–386 nontraditional signatures, 386 steady-state operation, 383 transient state, 383–384
disaggregation algorithms FHMM, 386 fundamental limits, 416–419 supervised methods, 386–390 unsupervised algorithms,
390–391 feature extraction, 378–379,
381–383 Gaussian case, 419–422 input space, 415 single-channel source separation
problem, 412–413 state-of-the-art algorithm, 411 utility-privacy tradeoff, 413–414
Nonintrusive load monitoring toolkit (NILMTK), 397
Nonoperational data characteristics, 8–10, 9–10f condition-based asset
management, 11 customers generating data, 16–18 data requirements matrix, 13–14 enterprise-centric value creation,
13–14 virtual data mart, 14, 15f, 16, 17f
North Carolina Municipal Power Agency No. 1 (NCMPA 1), 23–25
Not only SQL (NoSQL) databases, 60–61
Numerical weather prediction (NWP) models
solar forecasting, 351 wind forecasting
GMs, 345 hours- to day-ahead NWP-based wind forecasting, 346–347, 346–347f
LAMs, 345
O Occam’s razor principle, 79–80 ODBC. See Open Database
Connectivity (ODBC) Online analytics processing (OLAP)
platform, 65 Online transaction processing (OLTP)
database systems, 65 Open Database Connectivity
(ODBC), 44–45 Operational data
characteristics, 8–9, 8f, 10f functional data path, 12–13, 13f licensed wireless spectrum, 11 unlicensed spread-spectrum
technology, 11 virtual data mart, 14, 15f, 16, 17f
Optimal power flow(OPF), 233 Orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP),
163b
P PaaS. See Platform-as-a-Service
(PaaS) Pacific Northwest Smart Grid
Demonstration Project, 256–257
Parametric distance-based (DB) methods, 205–207
Partial discharge (PD) pattern recognition
maximum discharge, 173 mean discharge, 173 on-line monitoring schemes, 171 PRPD, 171 rate of PD repetition, 173 schematic diagram, 173, 174f SRC equation system, 173, 175f
PbD framework. See Privacy by Design (PbD) framework
PD pattern recognition. See Partial discharge (PD) pattern recognition
451Index
Phase-resolved partial discharge (PRPD), 171
Phasor measurement unit (PMUs) AC waveforms measurement, 58 big data and analytics, 45 data, 226 with decision trees, 226–227 design goals, 51 installation, 226 in power system operational tools,
227 Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), 63 Plug-Level Appliance Identification
Dataset (PLAID) dataset, 395 PMUs. See Phasor measurement unit
(PMUs) PostgreSQL CalcEventsLongFormat function,
340 data type, 339 evaluation setup, 340 MeterMinMax function, 340, 341t processing power, 339
Power distribution grid model, 283–284
Power distribution networks distributed database storage, 325 grid topology identification
(see Grid topology identification)
MapReduce functions
AsterMapReduce in-database
processing (see AsterMapReduce in- database processing)
distributed data processing, 327, 327f
PostgreSQL (see PostgreSQL) program code, 338–339
plug-and-play approach, 282 smart meter data acquisition
system, 324–325, 325t statistical programming language R,
325–326 unbalanced loads, 323, 323f voltage band, 323 voltage drop diagram, 323, 324f voltage unbalance events asymmetric active and reactive
power events, 336, 337f distributions, 330–332,
332–333f on feeder level, 328, 330f
histogram, 327, 328f for individual meters, 336, 336f MapReduce-based analysis, 327,
328t maximum and minimum
voltage, 337–338, 338f in network, 328–329, 331f on one feeder, 328–329, 331f same moment in time within a
snapshot, 333, 335f same time at the same meter,
334, 335f at same time in other nodes, 327,
329f unsymmetry events, 333, 334t
Power quality (PQ) analysis, 306 Power Snap Shot Analysis (PSSA)
method, 324–325 Power system state estimation conventional nonlinear state
estimation, 362–363 distribution system state
estimation, 369–370, 369t dynamic state estimation, 363–364 forecasting-aided state estimation,
364–365 PMU data-based linear state
estimation, 363–364 predictive state estimation
ELM algorithm (see Extreme
learning machine (ELM) algorithm)
IEEE 123-bus distribution system, 366, 367f
SCADA system, 361–362 Principle component analysis, 87–88 Privacy by Design (PbD) framework,
39 PRPD. See Phase-resolved partial
discharge (PRPD) Purely distance-based (DB) methods,
199–202
Q Q-learning algorithm, 139–140, 143,
150
R Reduction distance-based (DB)
methods, 202–203 Reference Energy Disaggregation
dataset (REDD), 393 REFIT dataset, 396
Reinforcement learning (RL) methods applicability and efficiency,
139–140 applications, 139 MDPs, 142 offline RL, 142 online RL, 142 Q-learning, 139–140, 143, 150 SARSA algorithm, 139–140,
143–144, 150 Scopus-indexed publications, 139,
140f Renewable energy forecasting, 352,
353t Renewable forecasting, 344–345 Restricted Boltzmann machines
(RBMs), 127, 144–145 Restricted isometry property, 162 RL methods. See Reinforcement
learning (RL) methods
S SaaS. See Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) SARSA algorithm. See State-action-
reward-state-action (SARSA) algorithm
Saudi Aramco, financial impacts, 32 SCADA system
demand response programs, 246 in Frankfort, Kentucky, 20–21 functional data path, 12–13 in Ketchikan, Alaska, 21–23 ML-based event detection tool, 77,
78f in North Carolina, 23–25 power system state estimation,
361–362 Scopus database, 125–126, 126f Self-organizing map (SOM) methods,
249–250, 252–253 Semisupervised learning, 102 SFA. See Symbolic Fourier
approximation (SFA) Shannon sampling theorem, 159–160 Shapelets, 203 Short-term load forecasting (STLF),
308 Smart*, 393 Smart energy management, 255 Smart grid
HPC, 64–65 integrated energy, 58 integrated services, 58
452 Index
Smart grid (Continued) observability and controllability, 58 operations
advantage, 48 ARMOR3, 49 connectivity models, 49 customer intelligence, 49 outage prediction and response
optimization, 49–50 PMUs, 48–49, 51 risk analytics, 50 transactive energy, 50 Vermont renewable energy
integration, 50 wide-area situational awareness,
51
Smart grid zero projects, 45 Smart meters, 58
corrupt measurement devices, 109 data, 410 data gaps, 109 data preprocessing, 108–109 IWB, 109 learning methods, 108–109 statistical analysis, 110–111, 110f
SMTS method. See Symbolic multivariate time series (SMTS) method
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), 63 Solar forecasting
hours- to day-ahead NWP-based solar forecasting, 351
irradiance variations, 350–351 methodologies, 351t minutes- to 2-hour-ahead sky
imaging-based solar forecasting, 352, 352f
Sun-Shot Vision Study, 350 SONET technology. See Synchronous
Optical Network (SONET) technology
Spark Streaming, 67–69 Sparse Outage Vector (SOV), 164 Sparse representation classifier (SRC)
equation system, 173, 175f State-action-reward-state-action
(SARSA) algorithm, 139–140, 143–144, 150
Stuxnet, 35 SunShot, 54 Supervised learning
Bayesian framework
HMM with autoregressive
emissions, 84–87
linear/ridge regression, 84 model selection, 79–80 Occam’s razor principle, 79–80 regularized empirical risk
minimization problem, 79–80 decision tree, 83 linear/ridge regression, 80–81 logistic regression, 81 nonparametric method, 82–83 support vector machine, 81–82
Supervised learning-based fault location. See Support vector machine (SVM)
Support vector machine (SVM), 81–82
duality theorem, 305 hybrid HVAC transmission lines
fault parameters and sensitivity
analysis, 318 faulty location errors, 317–318,
318f Gaussian noises, 317 identification errors, 317, 317f single-ended traveling wave-
based fault location algorithm, 315–316f, 316–317
state-of-the-art traveling wave fault location, 315
kernel function, 305–306 linear hyperplane, 304 optimal decision function,
305–306 optimization problem, 305–306 power system applications,
306–308 separation margin, 304 three-terminal transmission lines classification accuracies,
312–313, 313f fault parameters, 315 fault type classification
algorithm, 309–310, 310f Gaussian RBF kernel function,
313 phase-a-to-ground fault test case,
313–314, 314f traveling wave-based fault
location algorithm, 310–312, 311–312f
with unsynchronized high- resolution measurements, 308–309, 308f
two-dimensional feature space, 304f
SVM. See Support vector machine (SVM)
Symbolic Fourier approximation (SFA), 191–192
Symbolic multivariate time series (SMTS) method, 196–197
Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) technology, 21
T TCL model. See Thermostatically
controlled load (TCL) model Teradata Aster Discovery Platform,
325 Texas Synchrophasor Network, 224 Thermostatically controlled load
(TCL) model, 430–431 Three-terminal transmission lines
classification accuracies, 312–313, 313f
fault parameters, 315 fault type classification algorithm,
309–310, 310f Gaussian RBF kernel function, 313 phase-a-to-ground fault test case,
313–314, 314f traveling wave-based fault location
algorithm, 310–312, 311–312f with unsynchronized high-
resolution measurements, 308–309, 308f
Time-series classification methods applications, 211–212t categorization, 210t data flow diagram, 189f data reduction, 188 DB methods (see Distance-based
(DB) methods) dimensionality reduction, 189–190 FB methods (see Feature-based (FB)
methods) normality space, 184–185 numerosity reduction, 190–192 taxonomy, 186f time and space complexity of data,
188 Time-series methods
categorization, 209t classification problem (see Time-
series classification methods) data flow, 182f notations, 181–183, 181f,
182–184t windowing procedure, 181f
453Index
Topology learning with full observation, 270–271 with missing data
minimum weight spanning tree-
based topology learning, 273b missing intermediate nodes, 274 with unobserved leaf node/
nonleaf unobserved node, 272–274, 272f
using terminal node data, 275b Tracebase dataset, 394 Transmission system decision-aid tools, 225–226 dynamic behavior analysis,
226–227 locational marginal prices,
224–225 steady-state analysis functions,
228–229 Transmission system operator (TSO) asset management, 233–234 and DSO cooperation, 229–230 grid management functions, 224 PMU, 224
Truncated shrinkage effect, 97 T-Systems, 256
U UK Domestic Appliance-Level
Electricity (UK-DALE) dataset, 394
Ukraine, cyberattack, 31–32 Universal Smart Energy Framework
(USEF), 47 Unsupervised energy prediction deep belief network, 144–146 numerical results
commercial to residential
transfer, 150, 151t, 152f dataset characteristics, 146–147,
148f empirical results, 149, 149t prediction assessment metrics,
147–149
residential to residential transfer, energy demand profile, 151–153, 153t
RMSE values, 150, 150f RL methods (see Reinforcement
learning (RL) methods) transfer learning approaches, 139,
140f unlabeled data problem, 141
Unsupervised learning goal, 87 k-means clustering, 88–90 principle component analysis,
87–88 USEF. See Universal Smart Energy
Framework (USEF) User energy systems state estimation demand response, 360–361, 361f load forecasting
artificial intelligence-based
methods, 355–356 Gaussian process-based method,
356–359, 357–360f long-term, 354 medium-term, 354 regression analysis, 355 short-term, 354 state-space models, 355 time-series approaches model,
355
Utility-privacy tradeoff access control methods, 423 adversary model, 427 in direct load controlcapabilities, 432 control law, 433, 434f data minimization principle, 429 FIP principle, 429 model simulations, 435–436,
436–438f objective, 431–432 privacy analysis, 436–439,
438f sampling rates, 428–430
thermostatically controlled load model, 430–431
inferential privacy metric, 427–428 NILM, 413–414 privacy of data, 425–426 quality-based methods, 423 useranddatamechanismmodel,427 utility of data, 424–425
V Vermont Weather Analytics Center
(VTWAC), 50 Virtual data mart, 14, 15f, 16, 17f VPS ICE, 256
W WHITED dataset. See Worldwide
Household and Industry Transient Energy (WHITED) dataset
Wind forecasting hybrid physical and statistical
models, 345 minutes- to 2-hour-ahead machine-
learning-based wind forecasting, 347–349, 348f
NWP models
GMs, 345 hours- to day-ahead NWP-based
wind forecasting, 346–347, 346–347f
LAMs, 345 statistical methods, 345 WIND toolkit, 349–350, 349f
Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) toolkit, 349–350, 349f
Worldwide Household and Industry Transient Energy (WHITED) dataset, 396
Y YARN, 59
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- Y
Book Chapters for Ideas/Preface--Objective-and-Overview-of-the_2018_Big-Data-Application-in-Power-Sy.pdf
Preface: Objective and Overview
of the Book
The term “big data” is fairly new in power systems. Yet, its application and
methodologies applied to massive data sets were developed a long time ago for electricity load consumption forecasting. The recent developments in mon-
itoring, sensor networks, and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) dramat-
ically increase the variety, volume, and velocity of measurement data in electricity transmission and distribution networks. Moreover, the progress in
advanced statistics, machine learning (ML), database structure, and data min-
ing methodologies marked by increasing the availability of open source plat- forms for data analytics is transforming the power system area and turning
utilities into data-driven enterprises.
In order to discuss the big data analytics applications for power systems, this book brings together experts from all organizations and institutions impacted
including academia and industry. We focus on rapidly modernizing monitor-
ing and analytical approaches to process the high dimensional, heterogeneous, and spatiotemporal data. This book discusses challenges, opportunities, success
stories, and pathways for utilizing big data value in smart grids. The dramatic
change in the field of scientific computing, microprocessors, and data commu- nications is a burden for electric utilities to understand, follow, and adopt the
advanced statistics, computer science, and mathematics concepts. Today’s util-
ity engineers need to be more informed of the basic concepts and applications for massive field data analysis. This book’s goal is to facilitate the transition to
data-driven utilities by providing a comprehensive view on big data issues,
methodologies, and their various applications in the power systems area.
Much like the authorship of the chapters in this volume, the intended audience
for this book extends from researchers, graduate students, and faculty working in electricity networks and smart grid area to industrial scientists, engineers,
data analysis experts, and software developers who are working on electricity
networks and advanced technologies for smart grids. This book is also useful for people with less technical expertise in scientific computing. We expect that
the reader will have some proficiency in power systems fundamentals and that
xv
xvi Preface
he/she has had at least one elementary course in statistics. This book can also be
useful for senior undergraduate students who have passed courses on power systems.
This book has three sections as follows: I. Harness the Big Data From Power Sys- tems, II. Harness the Power of Big Data, and III. Put the Power of Big Data Into Power
Systems. The opening section is an overview of the opportunities and challenges
for data-driven utilities in the era of distributed technologies and resources such as Internet of Things (IoT), flexible demand, distributed generation, and energy
storage. The second section reviews research trends on ML and artificial intel-
ligence for the power system industry. The final section provides examples of the advanced data analytic applications for the grid operation. Taken together,
these three book sections provide an overview of the entire cycle of data analysis
in power systems. The book begins with the utility enterprise structure, business model, and privacy issues, then delves into research trends in advanced data
analysis, and ends full circle with real-world examples of actual applications
of data analytics used daily by utilities.
SECTION ONE: HARNESS THE BIG DATA FROM POWER SYSTEMS
To provide a big picture for electric utilities, this section describes the current
and future trends for data mining and data processing in electric utilities. The move toward data-driven utility is possible by a fundamental shift in orga-
nizational culture and business processes, as well as data-related technology
and practices. Moreover, enriching electric utilities with data requires interop- erability across all operational and enterprise units and recognition that main-
taining the data privacy, security, and the seamless data flow is highly
challenging. The interoperability in holistic data-driven utilities expands to cus- tomers through their engagement and continues demand-side management for
higher reliability, service quality, and efficiency. Aligning customers’ needs and
expectations with utilities’ business drivers will shape the roadmap to generate, process, and access the data in utilities.
The information and communication technology (ICT) platform is at the heart of the roadmap to data-driven utilities which supports the data flow from cus-
tomers all the way to the transmission and generation operators. Utilities made
aggressive steps toward smartness by adopting the distribution automation (DA) solutions followed by AMI platforms. DA and AMI made a revolution
in grid operation. However, the data flood from DA and AMI has created a
nightmare for the utilities’ ICT infrastructure. A holistic approach for data- driven utilities is needed to openly discuss and clarify the foundational ICT
requirements to serve all functions of the electric grid.
xviiPreface
Becoming a data-driven utility is inevitable in the age of internet, cloud com-
puting, smart phones, and distributed resources. The advanced data analytics make continuous innovation possible by unlocking insights never seen before.
The ML, deep learning, and statistical inference are tools that help utilities to
keep up with the torrent of data from different resources. Advanced big data analytics provide estimation, predication, diagnostics, and prognostics conclu-
sions from historical and real-time data flows. As more data becomes available
to utilities over time, the ML algorithms provide more refined insights on grid operation planning. However, the synergies between ICT networks, grid com-
ponents, operators, and customers run the power system into a complex giant
for ad hoc data-driven approaches and policies. This section of the book endeavors to deliver the message that a holistic approach based on a founda-
tion of open architecture and standards will ensure the open flow of data and
interoperability between devices, systems, databases, and people in order to make data-driven utilities. The all-inclusive approaches to generate, transfer,
and handle data also bring tremendous opportunities to break traditional bar- riers in utility organizations for delivering safe, reliable, and affordable power
to their customers.
Chapter 1 by John McDonald introduces these concepts through three case studies. He explores the value of a data-driven utility in terms of asset manage-
ment and safety, the fundamentals of standards and interoperability, and the
enterprises of increased visibility into the transmission and distribution net- work. The chapter illustrates the holistic data-driven utility and its fundamental
business drivers to establish information and communications technology
foundation, human resource, customer relation, and data-oriented organiza- tional cultural data in the grid operation and planning.
The data-driven utilities now face greater and more frequent risk of intrusion and/or interruption due to the fact that these networks are merging with cyber
networks, resulting in sociotechnical and cyber-physical systems that are creat-
ing an infrastructural IoT where all grid components can interact and collabo- rate. Integrating cyber components into the electric grid also means an
incredible increase in security vulnerability and interdependencies among
infrastructure components that create the risk of cascading effects after attacks. Moreover, the enhanced observability of the grid thanks to the smart meters’
high granular data is making more customers concerned and uncomfortable
about data privacy. Carol L. Stimmel discusses state-of-the-art data privacy and security in Chapter 2. She lists a number of actual cases for cyber security
attacks on the grid and explains the impact of data-driven approaches in
enhancing the data security and privacy. Data-driven utilities function as much more than the operators of the physical grid; utilities are also responsible for
massive enterprise systems with financial information, customer data, and a
growing network of digital operations under human control. Thus, security
xviii Preface
strategies must become more nuanced and complex, and should include pri-
vacy and other internal information technology controls.
The big data era is changing the utility workforce paradigm. Several major util-
ities are adding more software developers and data scientists to their R&D and operating groups, as well as power system experts. The power of data in inno-
vation is seen in more smart grid projects and AMI implementations. Some of
these projects applied Big Data and Analytics even without adding any new sen- sors, demonstrating the power of knowing more about what information was
already available to the utility through the SCADA systems. The utility innova-
tion movement came from the foresight that discarded data may prove useful. This includes data discarded during the process of developing an analytics strat-
egy, including predictive maintenance programs, thought to be valuable as the
design phase began, even though there was no known need for all of the data at the time. Analytics has moved from replicating alarm limits already available,
to deep learning for customer behavioral studies and cognitive computing for
renewable adoption optimization, as well as numerical methodologies for dynamic electricity market forecasting. Jeffrey Katz from IBM contributes
Chapter 3, “The Rule of Big Data and Analytics in Utilities Innovation” that
explains how data analytics pave the ground for innovation in utilities by point- ing to a number of successful projects in different utilities.
To harvest the advantages of big data, utilities need to employ platforms that can handle high volume, velocity, and volatility of the data. There are commer-
cial and ready-to-use platforms that serve the big data community. It is time for
utilities to take the lead in shaping power systems-specific data platforms. The in-memory calculation engine and parallel computing framework, Hadoop/
MapReduce and Spark, are ready for handling an extremely large scale of data-
set; on the other hand, the stream processing engine, Storm, Streams, and Spark Streaming are built to analyze data in motion and act on information as it is
happening. The architecture of big data platforms includes data integration,
warehousing, analytics, and combining the demand of smart grids to put for- ward a set of frameworks such as the Apache Hadoop ecosystem which has
excellent computing ability and can adapt to various business requirements.
Chapter 4 “Frameworks for Big Data Integration, Warehousing, and Analytics” by Feng Gao discusses different tools and techniques to support the growth of
smart grid and big data with high performance computing, with a focus on the
platform, data integration, warehousing, and analytics that are particularly adaptive to handle a variety of characteristics of energy industry data within
the data lifetime cycle.
xixPreface
SECTION TWO: HARNESS THE POWER OF BIG DATA
This theory-oriented section focuses on big data analytics. In particular, it dis-
cusses ML and data mining algorithms, methods, and implementation that are adaptable for data visualization, representation, exploratory analysis, regres-
sion, and pattern recognition in power systems. The objectives of this section
are twofold. On one hand, both classical and status quo ML paradigms are reviewed and discussed, motivating the proper usage of traditional super-
vised/unsupervised learning tools and the recent developments of semi-
supervised learning, multitask, multiview learning, sparse representation, deep learning, etc., for various tasks in power systems. The hope is that the dramatic
progress in ML can be fully harnessed to reform the solution of power system
state estimation, load forecasting, event detection, and structure identification. On the other hand, the reversed direction, i.e., the challenges and new prob-
lems brought by power system data to ML, is discussed. Similarly to the impact
of computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, or robot control on the advancement of ML, it is expected that the complexity of the
interconnected system, the behavior-related data generating process, as well
as the unique sensing and measurement techniques in power systems, would inspire novel theoretical and methodological results for ML.
It is worth pointing out that in this section, the term ML is used in a broader
sense, generally referring to a task to improve some performance metric, by exe- cuting a series of computation (algorithm) with some training experience (in
the form of collected sensor measurement, expert knowledge, survey entries,
etc.). Lying at the crossroads of statistics, computer sciences, artificial intelli- gence, and applied mathematics, the ML methods discussed in this section
deserve a comprehensive description from diverse perspectives, including,
but not limited to, their underlying probabilistic assumption, theoretical/ empirical generalization performance, model selection (hyper-parameter selec-
tion), computational complexity, numerical implementation, etc. Although a mathematically rigorous treatment of the above topics is not the focus of this
book, useful references are provided to interested readers. More often than not,
the proper usage of the state-of-the-art ML algorithm, or a desire to advance ML driven by power system applications, would surprisingly progress both
research fields.
More specifically, Chapter 5 starts with a brief discussion of classical supervised and unsupervised learning paradigms. The focus is not to give an extensive
review of the field, which is impossible due to its many ramifications, but rather
to equip the readers with popular approaches for regression, classification, dimension reduction, among other fundamentals. The chapter then focuses
on two important issues, feature engineering and model selection, in some
depth to demonstrate the proper usage and systematic tuning of those
xx Preface
off-the-shelf ML tools. The rest of this chapter is devoted to the introduction of
some recent schemes of ML that seem promising for power system data analysis applications. The topics discussed include semi-supervised learning, multitask
learning, transfer learning, multiview learning, information representation, etc.
Following the discussion, Chapter 6 provides a case study on the use of the clus-
tering algorithms for enhanced visibility of the electrical distribution system.
Based on smart meter data of more than 30,000 loads in the city of Basel, Swit- zerland, the authors demonstrate the power of exploratory data analysis using
unsupervised learning methods, which successfully reveals hidden structure,
property, and geographical consistency from the measurement data. The rich information mined from this analysis can be leveraged by DSOs to support
the grid operation.
The rest of the chapters in this section discuss in detail several advanced ML methods for power system applications. Motivated by the unprecedented high
volumes of data made available by the growth of home energy management systems and AMI, Dr. Mocanu et al. in Chapter 7 present the deep learning
framework to automatically extract knowledge and use it to improve grid oper-
ation. The chapter starts with a moderate introduction to the most well-known deep learning concepts, such as deep belief networks and high-order restricted
Boltzmann machine, followed by a discussion on their theoretical advantages
and limitations, such as computational requirements, convergence, and stabil- ity. As a concrete application, two case studies involving building energy pre-
diction using supervised and unsupervised deep learning methods are
presented. The chapter concludes with a glimpse into future trends highlighting some open questions as well as new possible applications.
Chapter 8 “Compressive Sensing for Power System Data Analysis,” focuses on
the applications of another state-of-the-art ML framework, namely compres- sive sensing-sparse recovery (CS-SR), which has enjoyed great success in other
fields like bio-engineering, signal processing, and computer vision, among
others. The adaptation of CS-SR in smart power networks monitoring, data analysis, security, and reliability should expect similar successes. The sparse
nature of the electrical power grids, as well as electrical signals, can be
exploited to introduce alternative mathematical formulations to address some of the most challenging system modeling, that of sparse identification prob-
lems in power engineering. The chapter begins with a concise presentation on
the theoretical and technical background of CS-SR. Next, the discussion moves to innovative CS-SR applications in smart grid technology. Finally,
the CS-SR techniques are explored in depth to propose novel methods for dis- tribution system state estimation (DSSE), single and simultaneous fault loca-
tion in smart distribution, and transmission networks, and partial discharge
(PD) pattern recognition.
xxiPreface
The rapid advancement of sensing and measurement technology in power sys-
tems has given researchers access to real-time records of system dynamic states. In particular, development of phasor measurement unit (PMU) tech-
nology has allowed the continuous monitoring of the transmission line
and the connected power systems, and can be complemented with utility monitoring devices, smart meters, and insulation monitoring units to build
a thorough picture of the whole grid structure, health, and dynamic behavior.
The data collected from these real-time measuring procedures is usually in the form of time series (TS). Hence, in Chapter 9 of this section, Dr. Gian Antonio
Susto et al. present an overview about the most recent ML techniques used for
TS pattern recognition. The chapter first summarizes existing methods of TS classification and highlights the issue of computational complexity, and then
provides discourse on the various dimension reduction and numerosity reduc-
tion techniques for a more parsimonious and informative representation of TS data. The chapter concludes with a comprehensive comparison of diverse clas-
sification methods in terms of their underlying assumption, performance, computational complexity, flexibility for decentralized execution, and other
categories.
SECTION THREE: PUT THE POWER OF BIG DATA INTO POWER SYSTEMS
This final section of the book presents the data-driven approaches unique to the
design, operation, and planning of utilities. Moreover, data-driven utilities
need new business models for knowledge extraction from data. Some examples are analysis of the demand response (DR) potential of grid users, big data pre-
processing from grid sensors, large-scale simulation of electricity markets, and
predictive maintenance of electrical equipment. Forecasting of real-time and day ahead market price, load, and renewable generation TS present huge busi-
ness value for utilities’ stakeholders and customers. The big data applications in
the distribution and transmission networks are mainly driven by two objec- tives: firstly, to increase the monitoring and situational awareness capability
and develop fast decision-making methods for operators, and secondly, to
implement predictive active management strategies that take advantage of flex- ibility from various technologies in the electricity supply and demand such dis-
tributed energy resources, energy storage, and DR.
However, exploiting the full potential of big data in utilities is challenged by
lack of statistics and data analytics knowledge in utilities workforce. Moreover,
the “ready-to-use” and industry-level ML tools and solutions are not wildly available to utilities which may increase the learning curve and utilities’ mod-
ernization time. This section provides a collection of modern data-driven
xxii Preface
solutions such as distributed learning and optimization, spatial-temporal
modeling of TS, data reduction, assimilation, and visualization methods for classic power system problems including state estimation, topology detection,
fault detection, and load disaggregation. The author hopes this book brings
more interests in ML and deep learning applications in power system operation and planning.
Chapter 10, “An Overview of Big Data Application in Power Transmission and Distribution Networks” provides a comprehensive overview of data-driven
trends such as feature extraction/reduction and distributed learning to extract
knowledge from the power system and market data. Furthermore, it describes the data-driven techniques for dynamic and steady-state analysis and control of
distribution and transmission systems.
In Chapter 11, “On Data-Driven Approaches for Demand Response,” Akin Tas- cikaraoglu presents a detailed investigation of the applications and benefits of
big data analytics in demand-side management or DR and their roles in provid- ing higher saving potential for both system operators and end users. He also
shows some examples of real-world implementations of DR.
Chapters 12 and 13 are devoted to topology detection. Knowledge of the exact topology, the open or closed status of switches and circuit breakers throughout
the network, is essential for all aspects of the power system operation.
Chapter 12, “Topology Learning in Radial Distribution Grids” presents an acquis- itive algorithm to learn the grid topology using voltage measurements collected at
a subset of the buses in power distribution networks. Chapter 13, “Grid Topology
Identification via Distributed Statistical Hypothesis Testing,” proposes an algo- rithm based on the identification of Markov random fields (graphical models)
and conditional correlation properties that characterize voltage measurements
in power distribution networks. It shows the correlation of voltage magnitude measurements in a radial distribution feeder with the topology of the grid.
In Chapter 14 entitled “Supervised Learning-Based Fault Location in Power Grid,” Dr. Livani, Hanif suggests an SVM network for the classification, identi-
fication, and localization of faults in a complex power transmission grid. Based
on the high-resolution/high-volume data made available by the proliferation of intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) in smart grids, this method is able to
achieve efficient and accurate fault diagnosis for system operators. The lesson
learned from this chapter, in particular, is to combine the effort to modify exist- ing ML algorithms with signal processing, and to increase our knowledge about
the system itself for handling new problems arising from the complex power
system and grid.
To introduce cutting edge tools, packages, and information technology for
readers who are interested in developing real-world power system data analysis
xxiiiPreface
platforms, the authors of Chapter 15 investigate the usage of recent big data
tools and methods in the context of power distribution networks. This chapter illustrates the use of MapReduce functions within R or Java, which is combined
with commercial distributed analytics database, the application of affinity
graphs for representing collaborative filters, a performance comparison to con- ventional database concepts, and many other features.
Being able to forecast energy resources, load patterns, and system state are key features of next-generation smart grid technology. An accurate predictive plat-
form would greatly benefit the planning, scheduling, and unit commitment in
terms of both efficiency and security. Chapter 16 entitled “Predictive Analytics for Comprehensive Energy System State Estimation” provides an overview and
a thorough discussion on predictive ML methods for wind, solar energy fore-
casting, load prediction, power system state estimation, etc. The ML tools included in the chapter range from classical regression, TS analysis, to kernel
method such as support vector regression and Gaussian process.
Finally, Chapters 17 and 18 are devoted to a particular yet important applica-
tion of big data analytics method to smart grid, namely energy disaggregation
or nonintrusive load monitoring (NILM). In essence, the goal is to estimate the power usage of individual appliances from an aggregate electricity consump-
tion measurement. Provided with more precise information including itemized
energy consumption profiles, both end users and grid managers can improve their utility in terms of energy consumption prediction, demand side manage-
ment, and user segmentation. Chapter 17 surveys the existing literature for
background, ML methods, and possible applications of energy disaggregation, while Chapter 18 discussed the issue of privacy in the energy disaggregation
framework. Both chapters are witness to the combination of cutting edge ML
methods and a deep understanding of the system characteristics for the advancement of smart grid technologies.
- Preface: Objective and Overview of the Book
- Section One: Harness the Big Data From Power Systems
- Section Two: Harness the Power of Big Data
- Section Three: Put the Power of Big Data Into Power Systems