Leveraging Feature Sets and Machine Learning for Enhanced Energy Load Prediction: A Comparative Analysis

Accurate cooling consumption forecasts are crucial for optimizing energy management, storage, and overall efficiency in interconnected HVAC systems. Weather conditions, building characteristics, and operational parameters significantly impact prediction accuracy. Since meteorological conditions highly influence cooling demand, leveraging external air data and user metrics offers a promising approach to estimate a building's hourly cooling energy usage. This study addresses the gap in existing research by comprehensively analyzing the performance of various machine learning algorithms, including ensemble learning and deep learning models, to improve prediction accuracy. By leveraging weather conditions, building characteristics, and operational parameters, we aim to predict cooling consumption across multiple systems (Cooling Ceiling, Ventilation, Free Cooling, and Total Cooling). Data from four weather stations, encompassing diverse features relevant to the European Central Bank (ECB) building's cooling consumption in Frankfurt, were employed. Our methodology includes the use of K-Nearest Neighbor, Decision Tree, Support Vector Regression, Linear Regression, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, XGBoost, Adaboost, Long-Short-Term Memory, and Gated Recurrent Unit. Models. The results consistently demonstrate the superiority of the Random Forest model across different weather stations and feature sets. This model achieved a Mean Squared Error of approximately 0.002-0.003, Mean Absolute Error of around 0.031-0.034, and Root Mean Squared Error of about 0.052-0.069. These findings contribute to improved building cooling load management, promoting insights into optimal energy utilization and sustainable building practices. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2024-08-06-01 Full Text: PDF