Load forecast model switching scheme for improved robustness to changes in building energy consumption patterns

This paper presents a new, accurate load forecasting technique robust to fluctuations due to unusual load behavioral changes in buildings, i.e., the potential for small commercial buildings with heterogeneous stores. The proposed scheme is featured with two functional components: data classification by daily characteristics and automatic forecast model switching. The scheme extracts daily characteristics of the input load data and arranges the load data into weekday and weekend data. Forecasting is conducted based on a selected model among ARMAX (autoregressive moving average with exogenous variable) models with the processed input data. Kalman filtering is applied to estimate model parameters. The model-switching scheme monitors the accumulated error and substitutes a backup load model for the currently working model, when the accumulated error exceeds a threshold value, to reduce the increased bias error due to the change in the consumption pattern. This switching reinforces the limited performance of parameter estimation given a fixed structure and, thus, forecasting capability. The study results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is reasonably accurate and even robust to changes in the electricity use patterns. It should help improve the performance for building control systems for energy efficiency.