A study on the transferability of computational models of building electricity load patterns across climatic zones

Abstract

Significant reduction in energy demand from non-domestic buildings is required if greenhouse emission reduction targets are to be met worldwide. Increasing monitoring of electricity consumption generates a real opportunity for gaining an in-depth understanding of the nature of occupant-related internal loads and the connection between activity and demand. The stochastic nature of the demand is well-known but as yet there is no accepted methodology for generating stochastic loads for building energy simulation. This paper presents evidence that it is feasible to generate stochastic models of activity-related electricity demand based on monitored data. Two machine learning approaches are used to develop stochastic models of plug loads; an autoencoder (AE) and a Functional Data Analysis (FDA) model. Using data from two office buildings located in different countries, the transferability of models is explored by training the models on data from one building and using the trained models to predict demand for the other building. The results show that both models predict plug loads satisfactorily, with a good agreement with the mean demand and quantification of the uncertainty.