Now that I’ve (finally!) submitted my PhD thesis, I can focus on designing and implementing a competition for energy disaggregation algorithms. EDF Energy have kindly given me post-doc funding from now until the end of December 2016 to work on the NILM competition.

The broad plan is to first consult with the NILM community and create a specification for the NILM competition which works for everyone. Then I plan to implement a web application which can run the NILM competition.

Right now, I’m writing a survey on the design of a competition for energy disaggregation algorithms. The aim of the survey is to systematically collect feedback about the design of the competition. I plan to launch the survey soon. Prior to the launch, I’m really eager to hear feedback on the survey itself. For example: is the survey missing any vital questions? Do some questions not provide sufficient options? Do some questions not make sense?!

Please note that, prior to the launch of the survey, my aim is to get feedback on the design of the survey itself. So please don’t actually submit any answers yet! Feel free to select options and click “next” but just please don’t click “submit” at the end of the survey. I’ll write another blog post when the survey is ready to accept answers.

It’s probably best to provide feedback about the survey in public on the relevant thread on the Energy Disaggregation Google Group. If you want your feedback to be private then, by all means, email me directly at [email protected]!

And please do get in touch if you have feedback on any aspect of the proposed NILM competition.