Research Projects ( 2018 -Present )
Here are some of the research projects I have participated in over the years, please check out the publications page for the corresponding papers.
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Demand side energy management using Non- Intrusive Load Monitoring (Ph.D. research)
Indian Institute of Science
Demand Side Energy Management Programs have mainly focused upon Demand Response Methods in which consumer is given incentive to reduce their consumption based on Dynamic Pricing Signals. In such a scenario the user is subjected to high pricing at certain times of Peak Load conditions. Prepaid Meters are being implemented to reduce distribution losses and energy theft. To complement such techniques the user must be given enough feedback of how they are consuming power by appliance level breakdown of energy usage. As a part of our work we introduced a system in which the user can both monitor and control his loads through a single platform. The system uses concepts of Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud Database to make the Demand Side Energy Management platform intuitive and user friendly. Non Intrusive Load Management (NILM) is used for Load Dis-aggregation rather than employing sensors on each Power Socket Outlet. The Data of the Disaggregated Loads is stored on the Google Firebase Realtime Database to allow for ease of access from a Smart Phone or the Web. Also the users have the feature of Load Control from the same platform, completing the loop for enabling of Load Energy Management.
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Energy Disaggregation Using Energy Demand Model and IoT-Based Control (Ph.D. research)
Indian Institute of Science
Energy Management Systems involve monitoring of loads, control, and providing recommendations to reduce demand or energy costs. Energy Disaggregation works on monitoring loads non intrusively, by having a single smart meter at the entry point to perform the task with machine learning techniques. Training of the machine learning model is an important step and may require historical sub-metered data of the appliances. As a part of our work, an energy demand model was used to generate the training data and alleviate the need for historical data of the appliance. The model is optimized for the Indian scenario based on the representation of appliances and active occupancy. The other important contribution of this work is the use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices to feed observable states to the disaggregation model to improve efficiency. A selectively enabled factorial hidden Markov model is utilized in which states of IoT control relays are presented to the model. The platform developed, enables both monitoring and control of appliances and provides insight into the overall user energy consumption and its breakdown at the appliance level.
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Multi-mode Operation of Converter for Power Quality Improvement (Ph.D. research)
Indian Institute of Science
In today’s dynamic world Electrical Power System has become much more fragile because of its dynamic demand and supply, making power quality maintenance a major challenge. An attempt is made in our work to develop a new control algorithm for a Four-Legged voltage source converter as a shunt compensator for a three-phase four-wire distribution system. In the proposed algorithm, first, the dominant power quality issue is found dynamically; then, the control algorithm modifies itself accordingly to tackle that dominant power quality problem by generating suitable reference compensator currents. As a result of this flexible algorithm, single device is able to tackle the dominant power quality problem contrary to the conventionally existing solution where different devices are used for different power quality problems making it a non-feasible and costly solution. Whereas in the our work, due to its capability to perform multiple functions the cost effectiveness is significantly improved. As a part of the work, two major power quality problems: poor power factor and poor voltage regulation are considered for the purpose of concept proofing. MATLAB is used for the simulation purpose. Thoroughly analyzed results along with the system design are presented as well.
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Design of 1kVA Shunt Compensator test bench (Ph.D. research)
Indian Institute of Science
With the need for Power Quality Improvement in distribution system, the need to test the possible solutions for this dynamic problem increases. Although simulation tools are available, they do not give practical output and the knowledge gained from the design of a test setup is unparalleled. Hardware design not only improves the understanding, but also educates about the various sub-systems involved in the proper functioning of the system. This approach also helps to find better solutions to overcome the shortcomings of the system and fine tune the tested system into a better system. As a part of our work, the hardware design procedure for a 1kVA system is presented. The system contains three-phase source, load and a parallelly connected shunt compensator. Three-phase shunt compensator is configurable into two topologies four-leg and three-leg Voltage source converter. Further, circuits pertaining to the pre-charging, gate signal conditioning, followed by the combined schematic design and three-dimensional model of the PCB is also described and presented.
Currently, we are in the process of developing the hardware for the compensator to test our simulated results under practical conditions.