Understanding Energy Contexts: An Assessment of Emerging Methods for the Thermo-Behavioural Characterization of Residential Households
Loading...
Date
2016-04-26
Authors
Stephen, Gordon
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Waterloo
Abstract
Unlocking the full potential of residential-sector energy efficiency gains will require the efforts of external agents (whether in the public, private, or not-for profit sectors) engaging with individual homeowners in order to encourage the adoption of energy-saving measures. To achieve this result efficiently and effectively, such agents require an easily-obtained understanding of the “energy context" governing a household's energy use and efficiency investment decisions: factors from the number, characteristics, attitudes, and values of occupants to the physical state of a dwelling to broader geographic, financial and legal considerations. Continuously-emerging sources of contextual and household-specific data have the potential, if integrated appropriately, to provide this understanding - but to what extent can this be achieved with current methodological tools, and can the state-of-the-art be improved?
This research has attempted to address this question, with an emphasis on the physical characteristics of homes and the behavioural patterns of their occupants. A review of existing characterization techniques in the literature yielded a set of methodological best practises and theoretical shortfalls, which were integrated with physical first principles and empirically-observed statistical trends to develop new modelling approaches to make use of hourly whole-house electricity consumption data, aiming to improve upon the state-of-the-art. A subset of these models (chosen for their speed and stability of parameter estimation) were compared to existing techniques: while one of the novel approaches yielded improved behavioural disaggregation performance and a simpler formulation compared to existing alternatives, there would seem to remain considerable opportunity for continued improvement, with results suggesting several potentially-promising areas for continued research.
Description
Keywords
energy efficiency, sustainable energy, smart meter analytics, energy conservation, demand management
LC Keywords
dwellings, energy conservation, energy consumption, energy auditing, energy policy, electric power consumption, electric power, renewable energy sources, electric meters