Verv specialises in capturing and analysing electrical signals from appliances in order to make homes smarter, more efficient and more sustainable. With a heritage in high-speed data acquisition techniques and AI, the electrical data that we capture isn’t just a simple view of the power draw of an appliance. Instead, it’s a high-resolution view of its electrical signature that contains a valuable mine of information about its energy consumption, efficiency and performance.

Performance is an interesting topic to spotlight when it comes to energy monitoring. Trying to track the performance of an appliance at a low resolution (i.e by acquiring and interpreting the electrical data at a slow speed) won’t yield many useful results. That’s because appliances, white goods in particular, are complex combinations of a variety of different electrical components that make finding issues or faults very difficult. …

We are extremely proud to announce that Maria McKavanagh, who has since become the CEO of Verv, has taken home the trophy for Young Energy Professional of the Year at the esteemed Energy Institute Awards.

The Energy Institute Awards recognise individuals and organisations from across the globe who are taking the energy industry by storm, working to achieve cleaner, cheaper and more sustainable energy.

Opening the 20th Energy Institute Awards ceremony, President Steve Holliday described the awards as “a celebration of the very best our industry has to offer to society, here in the UK and around the world.”

Maria joined Verv in January 2017, quickly making a name for herself in the industry as a pioneer for smart energy technology and vocalising just how significant it can be in helping to tackle climate change and reduce fuel poverty. She has represented Verv at a range of events including delivering keynote presentations at WIRED Smarter and Ofgem’s Future of Energy conference, driving awareness around the many issues faced as a result of an energy system that is struggling to modernise as quickly as it could. For the past three years, she has been nominated as one of Computer Weekly’s most influential women in UK tech. Maria is also a big advocate for women in STEM and energy, promoting the way in which diversity cultivates creativity and innovation in business. …

We are proud to announce that Verv’s Founder, Peter Davies, has been recognised as a Meaningful Business 100 (MB100) Leader by HotTopics.ht, a global business thought leadership platform.

This highly esteemed platform recognises leaders who are combining profit and purpose to work towards achieving the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

HotTopics.ht received over 500 peer nominations, from more than 50 countries, with each person scored across four key areas: leadership, innovation, scope and durability. The rigorous nomination process, led by an expert panel of 12 judges, whittled down the list to recognise the top 100 leaders, including Peter.

Founding Editor of HotTopics.ht, Tom Lytton-Dickie, said, “We are delighted to recognise Peter Davies as part of the Meaningful Business 100, which celebrates leaders from across the world, cutting across geography, industry, role and company size. Our goal is to create a unified platform for these leaders to collaborate and share knowledge in order to amplify their social impact in support of the UN 2030 agenda.” …

By William Martin

Disaggregation is the process of taking an aggregate signal, such as household energy sampled at a regular interval and decomposing it into its individual components, such as kettle or toaster usage. Energy disaggregation is a complex task as a single household may have tens of appliances on concurrently, each operating at a distinct power level; or, more complex, non-distinct power levels. To make matters easier, many household appliances have distinctive operating components such as motors, heating elements and compressors, and for these, it is possible to train classifiers to detect their operation signals.

Figure 1 demonstrates how the aggregate electric power load might look over a period of 40 minutes, with a refrigerator and an oven both operating concurrently. This also shows how the signal is often complex, and appliances always operate on top of an underlying background signature caused by lights and appliances on standby. …

We’re pleased to announce that The European NILM Workshop, now in its sixth year running, is taking place from the 1st — 2nd October 2019. The workshop invites researchers that are working on the topic of energy disaggregation (the breakdown of energy signals) in both academic and industry to a two-day conference, which this year will take place in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) is the process of analysing energy signals going into the home and determining which appliances are being used, along with their individual energy consumption.

We founded the NILM Workshop six years ago with our partners when we realised the lack of shared knowledge within the field. We wanted to provide a forum for those with knowledge of NILM to share expertise and collaborate, ensuring that existing knowledge was built upon to avoid duplicating work and help accelerate our learnings. …

In the wake of the UK committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050, Verv has signed a letter which calls for the UK government to create an International Centre for AI, Energy and Climate. The aim is for the government to develop AI-friendly policy frameworks and data access in order to ensure AI is being used for the public good.

Signed by 27 of the industry’s leading energy groups, the goal is to raise awareness that bold and urgent actions are required from everyone, including the UK government, in order to meet the Paris Agreement targets.

Like Verv, where AI and data are at the core of what we do, many large energy organisations understand that artificial intelligence is essential to managing the energy system and all of the data that comes with it including renewables, electric vehicles and battery storage. …

Last week saw team Verv head to Berlin for Event Horizon, one of the biggest conferences of the year focusing on blockchain in the energy sector. As members of the Energy Web Foundation, we also attended the EWF forum which brought together all of the affiliates, from start-ups to large corporations, with a vested interest in transitioning to a smarter energy system. This facilitated collaborative conversation in a workshop-type environment in order for us to pool our thoughts and knowledge to decipher next steps in accelerating this transition, with the climate crisis being a fundamental driver.

Having attended last year, it was interesting to observe how the market and conversation had moved on over the space of 12 months and determine what is driving the industry forward, as well as holding it back. It’s safe to say that this year saw the sector cutting through the hype of blockchain and instead focusing on tackling the challenges and realities of real world implementation, and honing in on the many very real and transformative opportunities. To sum it up, less talking and more doing. …

Written by Maria McKavanagh, Chief Innovation Officer at Verv

Climate change is finally starting to get some of the recognition it deserves, in no small part due to the activism of Greta Thunberg and her army of school strikers. She became vegan and gave up flying to minimise her own carbon emissions and this attitude of each of us “doing our bit” to reduce the negative impact on the planet will hopefully propagate across the world.

For many of us, giving up flying wouldn’t be an easy choice. For me it would mean I couldn’t see my family back in Ireland which is hugely important to me, however, there are many small steps we could all take which would have a dramatic impact on how green we are as a country and as a planet. …