Data-driven prediction models of multi-dimensional energy consumed in public buildings

Due to the intense pressure from energy shortage and environmental protection, an accurate prediction of building energy consumption is crucial for different energy conservation applications and policies. Besides simulation models and traditional statistical approaches, a data-driven modelling based on energy records provides new opportunities for predicting the building energy demand. This research is conducted based on the whole procedure of data mining with limited datasets, by making use of machine learning techniques and mathematical statistics. Especially, regarding the temporal and the architectural scales, models can be categorized into the short-term prediction, medium-term prediction and long-term prediction of classified energy consumptions, which also represent different modelling characteristics derived from mass data, limited data and poor data respectively. During the modelling process, the fuzzy C-means clustering and the interdisciplinary Lorenz curve were utilized to recognize different energy patterns. Afterwards, models of the nonlinear Support Vector Regression, the Grey model and the traditional polynomial regression were utilized respectively to output the predicted sequence. In summary, with datasets in current energy platforms, this paper presents a study of data-driven models based on energy records considering the nonlinear and uncertain features of different multi-dimensional models. (paper)