A hierarchical hidden Markov model framework for home appliance modeling

Correctly anticipating load characteristics of low voltage level is getting increased interest by distribution network operators. Energy disaggregation could be one of the potential approaches to exploit the massive amount of smart meter data to fulfill the task. Proper individual home appliance modeling is critical to the performance of NILM. In this paper, a hierarchical hidden Markov model (HHMM) framework to model home appliances is proposed. This model aims to provide better representation for those appliances that have multiple built-in modes with distinct power consumption profiles, such as washing machines and dishwashers. The dynamic Bayesian network representation of such an appliance model is built. A forward-backward algorithm, which is based on the framework of expectation maximization, is formalized for the HHMM fitting process. Tests on publically available data show that the HHMM and proposed algorithm can effectively handle the modeling of appliances with multiple functional modes, as well as better representing a general type of appliances. A disaggregation test also demonstrates that the fitted HHMM can be easily applied to a general inference solver to outperform conventional hidden Markov model in the estimation of energy disaggregation.