Forecasting Electricity Consumption in Residential Buildings for Home Energy Management Systems

Prediction of the energy consumption is a key aspect of home energy management systems, whose aim is to increase the occupant’s comfort while reducing the energy consumption. This work, employing three years measured data, uses radial basis function neural networks, designed using a multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) framework, for the prediction of total electric power consumption, HVAC demand and other loads demand. The prediction horizon desired is 12 h, using 15 min step ahead model, in a multi-step ahead fashion. To reduce the uncertainty, making use of the preferred set MOGA output, a model ensemble technique is proposed which achieves excellent forecast results, comparing additionally very favorably with existing approaches.