Author(s)

Esebi A. Nyari^1,2*, Marcel Castro-Sitiriche^1,3, Seungyong Eugene Park¹

¹Department of Material Energy and Science Engineering, The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, Arusha, Tanzania.
²Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
³University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus, Mayagüez, PR, USA.

The present study uses power data from panel meter connected to the micro-grid to identify electrical energy consumption of the school appliances and their behavior in both warm-up, standby and active operation states. Before the conduction of experiments a load auditing of the school appliances was carried out by reading the rated power of each device (e.g. photocopy machine, printer, and fridge). The captures of this kind of information were essential as it provides a starting point to determine energy use of each appliance and hence simplify the process of identification. The electric parameters such as active power, reactive power and current were used to analyze the behavior of electrical appliances in all states. Experimental results show that, both active and reactive power were found to be high for old Canon photocopy machine as compared to new Canon photocopy machine. Another experiment reveals that printing one copy by using HP laser printer consumes about 700 W, while photocopying one copy with new Canon machine utilizes approximately 1100 W. This study concludes that new photocopy machine consumes more electric energy in warm-up state as compared to other states (standby and active operation states). Future work is to develop an algorithm for demand side management strategies which will enable efficient utilization of the electric energy from the micro-grid and hence bring the intended energy impact to the school.

Power Load Pattern, Load Identification, Active Power and Reactive Power

Nyari, E. , Castro-Sitiriche, M. and Park, S. (2017) An Experimental Study of Electrical Appliances Consumption Using Panel Meter Data. Journal of Power and Energy Engineering, 5, 132-144. doi: 10.4236/jpee.2017.59011.