Building energy consumption prediction method based on Bayesian regression and thermal inertia correction

Abstract

The accurate prediction of building energy consumption is a crucial prerequisite for demand response (DR) and energy efficiency management of buildings. Nevertheless, the thermal inertia and probability distribution characteristics of energy consumption are frequently ignored by traditional prediction methods. This paper proposes a building energy consumption prediction method based on Bayesian regression and thermal inertia correction. The thermal inertia correction model is established by introducing an equivalent temperature variable to characterize the influence of thermal inertia on temperature. The equivalent temperature is described as a linear function of the actual temperature, and the key parameters of the function are optimized through genetic algorithm (GA). Using historical energy usage, temperature, and date type as inputs and future building energy comsuption as output, a Bayesian regression prediction model is established. Through Bayesian inference, combined with prior information on building energy usage data, the posterior probability distribution of building energy usage is inferred, thereby achieving accurate forecast of building energy consumption.  The case study is conducted using energy consumption data from a commercial building in Nanjing. The results of the case study indicate that the proposed thermal inertia correction method is effective in narrowing the distribution of temperature data from a range of 24.5°C to 36.5°C to a more concentrated range of 26.5°C to 34°C, thereby facilitating a more focused and advantageous data distribution for predictions. Upon applying the thermal inertia correction method, the relative errors of the Radial Basis Function (RBF) and Deep Belief Network (DBN) decreases by 2.0% and 3.1% respectively, reaching 10.9% and 7.0% correspondingly. Moreover, with the utilization of Bayesian regression, the relative error further decreases to 4.4%. Notably, the Bayesian regression method not only achieves reduced errors but also provides probability distribution, demonstrating superiority over traditional methods.