An activity-based energy demand modeling framework for buildings: A bottom-up approach

Files
TR Number
Date
2013-05-23
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Virginia Tech
Abstract

Energy consumption by buildings, due to various factors such as temperature regulation, lighting, poses a threat to our environment and energy resources. In the United States, statistics reveal that commercial and residential buildings combined contribute about 40 percent of the overall energy consumption, and this figure is expected to increase. In order to manage the growing demand for energy, there is a need for energy system optimization, which would require a realistic, high-resolution energy-demand model. In this work, we investigate and model the energy consumption of buildings by taking into account physical, structural, economic, and social factors that influence energy use. We propose a novel activity based modeling framework that generates an energy demand profile on a regular basis for a given nominal day.  We use this information to generate a building-level energy demand profile at highly dis-aggregated level. We then investigate the different possible uses of generated demand profiles in different What-if scenarios like urban-area planning, demand-side management, demand sensitive pricing, etc. We also provide a novel way to resolve correlational and consistency problems in the generation of individual-level and building-level "shared" activities which occur due to individuals' interactions.

Description
Keywords
energy, buildings, activity, regression models, smart grid, demand
Citation
Collections