Non-intrusive condition monitoring based on event detection and functional data clustering

Abstract

Implementing monitoring electricity consumption strategies in industrial environments provides improvements in both the maintenance process and energy efficiency. The contribution of this work is an industry-oriented non-intrusive load monitoring approach based on an unsupervised algorithm, encompassing a method of event detection, functional data clustering, and condition monitoring. With this method, multiple devices can be monitored by only one electric meter in industrial environments, enhancing the early detection of anomalies and energy inefficiencies. The proposed approach presents a robust event detection to deal with different industrial contexts due to its intuitive parameters, which allows adapting the detection to be more sensitive or to filter out higher noise variations. Unlike other feature-based clusterings, the proposed functional data clustering enables high-precision identification of transient state patterns, characterizing specific shapes for each pattern to properly cluster them, and provides higher reliability during load detection. Thus, this load detection segments the power consumption to extract transient states and identify which load acts on each event based on functional data clusters. By detecting when loads start to consume, the proposed energy disaggregation extracts the frequency spectrum of each device from the aggregate current consumption, which is used in a condition monitoring strategy to track the spectrum behavior of each device. In this way, the condition of multiple loads can be monitored using a single electric meter, whose information can be relevant to accurately schedule maintenance interventions and detect anomalies or inefficiencies early. The proposed approach was validated in three industrial contexts: The load detection accuracy was verified in an industrial testbed, giving a precision higher than 99% for monitoring five devices. The second and third industrial scenarios validate the accuracy of the proposed condition monitoring method. The last scenario was carried out at Bilbao airport to track the condition of multiple conveyor belts of a baggage handling system located at check-in. As a result, the degradation trend of three sets of conveyor belts was monitored.