TY - GEN
T1 - Short paper
T2 - 3rd ACM Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments, BuildSys 2016
AU - Bianco, Federica B.
AU - Koonin, Steven E.
AU - Mydlarz, Charlie
AU - Sharma, Mohit S.
PY - 2016/11/16
Y1 - 2016/11/16
N2 - Hypertemporal visible imaging of an urban lightscape can reveal the phase of the electrical grid granular to individual housing units. In contrast to in-situ monitoring or metering, this method offers broad, persistent, real-time, and non-permissive coverage through a single camera sited at an urban vantage point. Rapid changes in the phase of individual housing units signal changes in load (e.g., appliances turning on and off), while slower building-or neighborhood-level changes can indicate the health of distribution transformers. We demonstrate the concept by observing the 120 Hz flicker of lights across a NYC skyline. A liquid crystal shutter driven at 119.75 Hz down-converts the flicker to 0.25 Hz, which is imaged at a 4 Hz cadence by an inexpensive CCD camera; the grid phase of each source is determined by analysis of its sinusoidal light curve over an imaging "burst" of some 25 seconds. Analysis of bursts taken at ∼ 15 minute cadence over several hours demonstrates both the stability and variation of phases of halogen, incandescent, and some fluorescent lights. Correlation of such results with ground-truth data will validate a method that could be applied to better monitor electricity consumption and distribution in both developed and developing cities.
AB - Hypertemporal visible imaging of an urban lightscape can reveal the phase of the electrical grid granular to individual housing units. In contrast to in-situ monitoring or metering, this method offers broad, persistent, real-time, and non-permissive coverage through a single camera sited at an urban vantage point. Rapid changes in the phase of individual housing units signal changes in load (e.g., appliances turning on and off), while slower building-or neighborhood-level changes can indicate the health of distribution transformers. We demonstrate the concept by observing the 120 Hz flicker of lights across a NYC skyline. A liquid crystal shutter driven at 119.75 Hz down-converts the flicker to 0.25 Hz, which is imaged at a 4 Hz cadence by an inexpensive CCD camera; the grid phase of each source is determined by analysis of its sinusoidal light curve over an imaging "burst" of some 25 seconds. Analysis of bursts taken at ∼ 15 minute cadence over several hours demonstrates both the stability and variation of phases of halogen, incandescent, and some fluorescent lights. Correlation of such results with ground-truth data will validate a method that could be applied to better monitor electricity consumption and distribution in both developed and developing cities.
KW - Imaging
KW - Time series analysis
KW - Urban science: observing techniques
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85006819122&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85006819122&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2993422.2993570
DO - 10.1145/2993422.2993570
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85006819122
T3 - Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments, BuildSys 2016
SP - 61
EP - 64
BT - Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments, BuildSys 2016
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Y2 - 15 November 2016 through 17 November 2016
ER -