System and method for utility usage, monitoring and management

摘要

Systems and methods are provided for collecting waveform data for a plurality of appliances that may be found in a residential or commercial setting using multi-port outlet monitoring devices to obtain power consumption profiles that indicate power consumption on a per-appliance and/or per-location basis and/or per user basis. The plurality of appliances is reliably identified from the power consumption profiles. In accordance with a method embodiment, waveform data transmitted from an unknown appliance is independently metered via a multi-port monitoring device over an elapsed time period. The metered waveform data is wirelessly transmitted from the multi-port monitoring device to a co-located system controller which constructs an appliance signature. The process may be repeated to generate multiple appliance signatures. The one or more appliance signatures are compared to a database of pre-stored canonical signatures to determine if there is a match to identify the appliance.