WattDepot

Participants

• CSDL: Robert Brewer
  
• Affiliates: REIS
  

Summary

WattDepot is a RESTful web service that collects electricity data (such as current power utilization or cumulative power utilization) from meters and stores it in a database. The data can then be retrieved by other tools for visualization and analysis.

WattDepot provides a unique combination of useful features:

• WattDepot is agnostic about the kinds of meters used to monitor energy production/consumption data, and whether the energy data is utility-scale or personal-scale. WattDepot implements a REST protocol for data transmission that can be used to implement clients for a wide variety of devices; the major constraint is that these devices need to have Internet access. WattDepot clients can be written in any language that supports the HTTP protocol. We provide a high-level client library for Java.

• WattDepot can represent aggregations of power sources. For example, a building might have multiple meters monitoring energy consumption, one per floor. WattDepot can represent the power consumed by individual floors, as well as an aggregate source representing the building as a whole. Aggregations can be nested, so that floors can be aggregated into buildings, buildings into neighborhoods, and neighborhoods into cities.

• WattDepot automatically performs data interpolation when necessary. For example, a meter might provide a snapshot of energy usage once per hour for a given device. Clients can request the power consumed by this device at any time instant, and WattDepot will automatically provide interpolation when the requested time does not match a time for which actual sensor data is available. This becomes particularly important and useful for aggregate power sources. For example, the meters on individual floors of a building will rarely send their data at exactly the same time instant, so providing an aggregate value for power consumed requires combining individual data values obtained at different times.

• WattDepot provides carbon intensity data as well as energy data. To understand the ecological impact of power, it is useful to know the amount of carbon released by a given energy generation source.

• WattDepot is architecturally decoupled from the underlying data storage technology. This supports experimentation with both traditional relational as well as NoSQL technologies, and facilitates scalability.

• Unlike hosted solutions like Google PowerMeter, WattDepot can be installed and run locally. This makes it useful for simulations, experimentation, and what-if scenarios in addition to real-time data collection.

• WattDepot is open source and will remain freely available to the community.

Software

Publications

See the WattDepot Publications Area for a list of current publications and technical reports.

Status

Currently under development.

Keywords

Sustainability, energy repositories