General questions on entering data

[JackKelly]

Moved from @gjwo's comment on the UK-DALE metadata issue queue: JackKelly/UK-DALE_metadata#2 (comment)

-components is confusing, does this refer to any electric device, or to the base components described in https://github.com/nilmtk/nilm_metadata/blob/v0.2/central_metadata/appliance_types/components.yaml

In order to be consistent would this be an appropriate appliance template for me to use
appliances:

original_name: description: manufacturer: type: subtype: room:
meters: [1] nominal_consumption: on_power_threshold: instance: 1 year_of_purchase: dates_active:

Questions
what is dominant_appliance: true for?
what about portable appliances?
what's the difference between nominal_consumption and on_power_threshold?
why no model or model number tag - could be significant as signatures become available
I would put the building related data first, then rooms, then meters then appliances i.e. least likely to change first, any reason not to do this?

[gjwo]

original formatting should have been

[JackKelly]

components is confusing. does this refer to any electric device, or to the base components described in https://github.com/nilmtk/nilm_metadata/blob/v0.2/central_metadata/appliance_types/components.yaml

A component can be any Appliance object. See the docs. This is also described in my paper on NILM Metadata.

In order to be consistent would this be an appropriate appliance template for me to use
appliances...

that looks good but only a few of those attributes are required.

what is dominant_appliance: true for?

Please see the docs: http://nilm-metadata.readthedocs.org/en/latest/dataset_metadata.html#appliance

what about portable appliances?

Good question! I've just added an Appliance:portable attribute.

what's the difference between nominal_consumption and on_power_threshold?

nominal_consumption what the manufacturer says that appliance draws. on_power_threshold is the threshold (in watts) used to decide if the appliance is on or off. I've updated the docs to make this more clear.

why no model or model number tag

I don't understand. Appliance has attributes model, manufacturer, brand, part_number, gtin and version. Please see the docs.

I would put the building related data first, then rooms, then meters then appliances i.e. least likely to change first, any reason not to do this?

That sounds sensible. The UK-DALE metadata doesn't do this because it's machine-generated and I have no control over the placement.

[gjwo]

components - I understand components as sub parts of a device, but that didn't appear to be how it was used in UK-DALE - I will read your references again

agree, I will leave out references not required

portable - I think I treated this a a pseudo room value, not a sure which way works best until I try it in the context of your toolkit.

I missed the model stuff because I was working from UK-DALE examples rather than the manual

[gjwo]

dominant_appliance:
(boolean) (required if multiple appliances attached to one meter). Is this appliance responsible for most of the power demand on this meter?
I am not sure if this is worth using for a building with only one meter

[JackKelly]

I am not sure if this is worth using for a building with only one meter

Sure. dominant_appliance is just for the case where you have an IAM which is connected to, say, 3 appliances and one of those appliances is used 95% of the time.