This document discusses non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM), which is a process that uses a single sensor installed at the main electrical panel of a home to identify individual appliance energy usage without additional per-appliance sensors. It describes the general NILM framework, which includes data acquisition, feature extraction, load identification, and system training. Challenges of NILM include identifying low power appliances and handling new appliances not in the signature database. NILM research aims to improve accuracy by combining transient and steady-state appliance signatures and using unsupervised learning methods.