Short-Term Building Electrical Energy Consumption Forecasting by Employing Gene Expression Programming and GMDH Networks

Fuzzy Clustering-Based Deep Learning for Short-Term Load Forecasting in Power Grid Systems Using Time-Varying and Time-Invariant Features

Accurate short-term load forecasting (STLF) is essential for power grid systems to ensure reliability, security and cost efficiency. Thanks to advanced smart sensor technologies, time-series data related to power load can be captured for STLF. Recent research shows that deep neural networks (DNNs) are capable of achieving accurate STLP since they are effective in predicting nonlinear and complicated time-series data. To perform STLP, existing DNNs use time-varying dynamics of either past load consumption or past power correlated features such as weather, meteorology or date. However, the existing DNN approaches do not use the time-invariant features of users, such as building spaces, ages, isolation material, number of building floors or building purposes, to enhance STLF. In fact, those time-invariant features are correlated to user load consumption. Integrating time-invariant features enhances STLF. In this paper, a fuzzy clustering-based DNN is proposed by using both time-varying and time-invariant features to perform STLF. The fuzzy clustering first groups users with similar time-invariant behaviours. DNN models are then developed using past time-varying features. Since the time-invariant features have already been learned by the fuzzy clustering, the DNN model does not need to learn the time-invariant features; therefore, a simpler DNN model can be generated. In addition, the DNN model only learns the time-varying features of users in the same cluster; a more effective learning can be performed by the DNN and more accurate predictions can be achieved. The performance of the proposed fuzzy clustering-based DNN is evaluated by performing STLF, where both time-varying features and time-invariant features are included. Experimental results show that the proposed fuzzy clustering-based DNN outperforms the commonly used long short-term memory networks and convolution neural networks.

Advanced AI Applications in Energy and Environmental Engineering Systems

Artificial intelligence (AI) constitutes a kind of modelling method widely used in various fields of science including energy and environmental engineering [...]

Analysis of the Integration of Drift Detection Methods in Learning Algorithms for Electrical Consumption Forecasting in Smart Buildings

Buildings are currently among the largest consumers of electrical energy with considerable increases in CO2 emissions in recent years. Although there have been notable advances in energy efficiency, buildings still have great untapped savings potential. Within demand-side management, some tools have helped improve electricity consumption, such as energy forecast models. However, because most forecasting models are not focused on updating based on the changing nature of buildings, they do not help exploit the savings potential of buildings. Considering the aforementioned, the objective of this article is to analyze the integration of methods that can help forecasting models to better adapt to the changes that occur in the behavior of buildings, ensuring that these can be used as tools to enhance savings in buildings. For this study, active and passive change detection methods were considered to be integrators in the decision tree and deep learning models. The results show that constant retraining for the decision tree models, integrating change detection methods, helped them to better adapt to changes in the whole building’s electrical consumption. However, for deep learning models, this was not the case, as constant retraining with small volumes of data only worsened their performance. These results may lead to the option of using tree decision models in buildings where electricity consumption is constantly changing.

Modeling Energy Demand—A Systematic Literature Review

In this article, a systematic literature review of 419 articles on energy demand modeling, published between 2015 and 2020, is presented. This provides researchers with an exhaustive overview of the examined literature and classification of techniques for energy demand modeling. Unlike in existing literature reviews, in this comprehensive study all of the following aspects of energy demand models are analyzed: techniques, prediction accuracy, inputs, energy carrier, sector, temporal horizon, and spatial granularity. Readers benefit from easy access to a broad literature base and find decision support when choosing suitable data-model combinations for their projects. Results have been compiled in comprehensive figures and tables, providing a structured summary of the literature, and containing direct references to the analyzed articles. Drawbacks of techniques are discussed as well as countermeasures. The results show that among the articles, machine learning (ML) techniques are used the most, are mainly applied to short-term electricity forecasting on a regional level and rely on historic load as their main data source. Engineering-based models are less dependent on historic load data and cover appliance consumption on long temporal horizons. Metaheuristic and uncertainty techniques are often used in hybrid models. Statistical techniques are frequently used for energy demand modeling as well and often serve as benchmarks for other techniques. Among the articles, the accuracy measured by mean average percentage error (MAPE) proved to be on similar levels for all techniques. This review eases the reader into the subject matter by presenting the emphases that have been made in the current literature, suggesting future research directions, and providing the basis for quantitative testing of hypotheses regarding applicability and dominance of specific methods for sub-categories of demand modeling.

A Review of Deep Learning Techniques for Forecasting Energy Use in Buildings

Buildings account for a significant portion of our overall energy usage and associated greenhouse gas emissions. With the increasing concerns regarding climate change, there are growing needs for energy reduction and increasing our energy efficiency. Forecasting energy use plays a fundamental role in building energy planning, management and optimization. The most common approaches for building energy forecasting include physics and data-driven models. Among the data-driven models, deep learning techniques have begun to emerge in recent years due to their: improved abilities in handling large amounts of data, feature extraction characteristics, and improved abilities in modelling nonlinear phenomena. This paper provides an extensive review of deep learning-based techniques applied to forecasting the energy use in buildings to explore its effectiveness and application potential. First, we present a summary of published literature reviews followed by an overview of deep learning-based definitions and techniques. Next, we present a breakdown of current trends identified in published research along with a discussion of how deep learning-based models have been applied for feature extraction and forecasting. Finally, the review concludes with current challenges faced and some potential future research directions.

A Review of Energy Consumption Forecasting in Smart Buildings: Methods, Input Variables, Forecasting Horizon and Metrics

Buildings are among the largest energy consumers in the world. As new technologies have been developed, great advances have been made in buildings, turning conventional buildings into smart buildings. These smart buildings have allowed for greater supervision and control of the energy resources within the buildings, taking steps to energy management strategies to achieve significant energy savings. The forecast of energy consumption in buildings has been a very important element in these energy strategies since it allows adjusting the operation of buildings so that energy can be used more efficiently. This paper presents a review of energy consumption forecasting in smart buildings for improving energy efficiency. Different forecasting methods are studied in nonresidential and residential buildings. Following this, the literature is analyzed in terms of forecasting objectives, input variables, forecasting methods and prediction horizon. In conclusion, the paper examines future challenges for building energy consumption forecasting.