Energy consumption prediction of office buildings based on echo state networks

In this paper, energy consumption of an office building is predicted based on echo state networks (ESNs). Energy consumption of the office building is divided into consumptions from sockets, lights and air conditioners, which are measured in each room of the office building by three ammeters installed inside, respectively. On the other hand, an office building generally consists of several types of rooms, i.e., office rooms, computer rooms, storage rooms, meeting rooms, etc., the energy consumption of which varies in accordance with different working routines in each type of rooms. In this paper, several novel reservoir topologies of ESNs are developed, the performance of ESNs with different reservoir topologies in predicting the energy consumption of rooms in the office building is compared, and the energy consumption of all the rooms in the office building is predicted with the developed topologies. Moreover, parameter sensitivity of ESNs with different reservoir topologies is analyzed. A case study shows that the developed simplified reservoir topologies are sufficient to achieve outstanding performance of ESNs in the prediction of building energy consumption. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.