Energy node locator — A pathway to track energy at the point of use, remotely, in buildings

The smart grid will increase building energy efficiency and conservation via combining information and communication technologies, advanced instrumentations, system intelligence, and information on the end user. Specifically Demand Side Management (DSM) programs serve as an aid in energy conservation and management strategies as well as in the collection of real-time consumption information data. As proposed in this paper, real-time, fine-grain consumption data at the point of use in buildings can be used by building energy managers, utilities, and the end user for planning, load forecasting, and feedback for providing information that may lead to end user behavior change. This paper focuses on the development of a platform detecting every active node in the building remotely and using a combination of tools to monitor and locate these active nodes. The paper will discuss the main component of this platform, the energy node locator and how it works based on the principles of Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR). Preliminary results will be presented and used to evaluate the node locator principles. Summary and future work will be presented to discuss the framework moving forward.