Sampath Dechu

A Framework for Evaluating the Costs and Benefits of Instrumentation in Smart Home Systems

The goal of this paper is to establish a framework for evaluating the marginal utility of adding smart sensing and metering hardware to residential premises, in terms of efficiency improvement (reduction in energy consumption) and economic benefits (reduction in energy cost). A simulation procedure is developed for experimenting with different types of hardware architectures. In-house analysis algorithms suitable to the installed suite of sensing and metering hardware are applied, which take into account realistic practical constraints. The proposed methodology allows us to perform a cost-benefit analysis of several potential smart home solutions. This analysis is meant to enable home owners to evaluate a priori the real cost saving potential of these solutions, when applied to their home.

Mobiceil: cost-free indoor localizer for office buildings

Location awareness of people inside commercial establishments can help with occupancy-based dynamic energy management and indoor navigation. In this paper, we propose MobiCeil, a novel phone-based indoor localization technique. The proposed technique is offline, automated, and uses image captured from phones camera to identify the unique ceiling structure of any particular location in the office building. The proposed method is based on these assumptions: (a) in office, employees tend to keep their phones lying on the table, and (b) the layout of ceiling landmarks in a portion of the ceiling structure (as captured by the phones camera on the table) is unique. We validated these assumptions by checking the phone placement of 47 employees randomly at their cubicle or meeting room, and collecting ceiling layout data from 18 meeting rooms and 6 cubicles in an IT office building. To evaluate the performance of MobiCeil, we collected images of the ceiling as seen by the phone (front and back) camera in three different rotations of the phone placed on the table, to capture a total of 960 ceiling images. Our approach achieved an accuracy of 88.2% for identifying locations, with a low computation time of 2.8s per image.

SMOME: A framework for evaluating the costs and benefits of instrumentation in smart home systems

The goal of this paper is to establish a framework called SMOME for evaluating the marginal utility of adding smart sensing and metering hardware to residential premises, in terms of efficiency improvement (reduction in energy consumption) and economic benefits (reduction in energy cost). In order to isolate the effect of smart home technologies on energy efficiency, it is assumed that no changes are made to the appliances already installed. SMOME is developed for experimenting with different types of hardware architectures. Analysis algorithms suitable to the installed suite of sensing and metering hardware are described, which take into account realistic practical constraints. Validated with empirical appliance-level data, the proposed methodology allows us to perform a cost-benefit analysis of several potential smart home solutions. This analysis is meant to enable home owners to evaluate a priori the real cost saving potential of these solutions, when applied to their home.

A socially aware incentive strategy for encouraging residential solar uptake in Brunei

This paper proposes an economic incentive strategy for encouraging the installation of solar photovoltaic cells amongst residential consumers in Brunei. Prior literature analyses several options in different geographical contexts, all of which focus on subsidising the effective prorated cost of energy from solar resources. It has also been noted that social effects such as the influence of neighbours and economic status can have a significant effect on the spatio-temporal rate of solar uptake. In this work, we estimate the impact of these factors using a model trained on an empirical data set. Subsequently, we develop a versatile policy architecture for the country of Brunei, based on (i) geographical location within the country, (ii) sociological meta data of residents, and (iii) the economic characteristics and drivers that are unique to Brunei. These characteristics, which include an abundance of fossil fuel reserves, subsidised energy costs, and the need to balance economic and social objectives, impart intriguing properties to the incentive structure.