A critical study of power consumption patterns in Indian apartments

Abstract

Energy conservation plays an important role in the economic development of a country. The total share of building ’s energy consumption in the country ’s energy consumption is increasing every year in India. Thus, it is essential to study the various features that impact the energy consumption in the domestic house holds which can be used for effectivepolicy making for energy conservation and also advise individuals on how to monitor andcontrol their energy consumption. The purpose of our study is to explore the variousfactors that are affecting the total power consumption in domestic households in India.The factors include the floor level of the apartment, family size, orientation of the building,no of adults and children. The study was conducted on the faculty apartments in theIIIT-Delhi campus, India from the year 2014. The significant features were identified usingregression analysis on the data. Interaction effects between the features that impact theenergy consumption was also studied. So from our analysis, we have found out that floorlevel, orientation, family size, the presence of a working couple are having a significantimpact on the energy consumption patterns of the household. We have also developed anandroid app that will help household dwellers to monitor their usage in real time and alsoto check their historical usage and compare the trends. They can get an estimate on thenumber of units consumed and average power consumed for the selected duration of time.