Design of ensemble forecasting models for home energy management systems

The increasing levels of energy consumption worldwide is raising issues with respect to surpassing supply limits, causing severe effects on the environment, and the exhaustion of energy resources. Buildings are one of the most relevant sectors in terms of energy consumption; as such, efficient Home or Building Management Systems are an important topic of research. This study discusses the use of ensemble techniques in order to improve the performance of artificial neural networks models used for energy forecasting in residential houses. The case study is a residential house, located in Portugal, that is equipped with PV generation and battery storage and controlled by a Home Energy Management System (HEMS). It has been shown that the ensemble forecasting results are superior to single selected models, which were already excellent. A simple procedure was proposed for selecting the models to be used in the ensemble, together with a heuristic to determine the number of models.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Non-intrusive load monitoring of household devices using a hybrid deep learning model through convex hull-based data selection

The availability of smart meters and IoT technology has opened new opportunities, ranging from monitoring electrical energy to extracting various types of information related to household occupancy, and with the frequency of usage of different appliances. Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) allows users to disaggregate the usage of each device in the house using the total aggregated power signals collected from a smart meter that is typically installed in the household. It enables the monitoring of domestic appliance use without the need to install individual sensors for each device, thus minimizing electrical system complexities and associated costs. This paper proposes an NILM framework based on low frequency power data using a convex hull data selection approach and hybrid deep learning architecture. It employs a sliding window of aggregated active and reactive powers sampled at 1 Hz. A randomized approximation convex hull data selection approach performs the selection of the most informative vertices of the real convex hull. The hybrid deep learning architecture is composed of two models: a classification model based on a convolutional neural network trained with a regression model based on a bidirectional long-term memory neural network. The results obtained on the test dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, achieving F1 values ranging from 0.95 to 0.99 for the four devices considered and estimation accuracy values between 0.88 and 0.98. These results compare favorably with the performance of existing approaches.This research was funded by Programa Operacional Portugal 2020 and Operational Program CRESC Algarve 2020, grant numbers 39578/2018 and 72581/2020. Antonio Ruano also acknowledges the support of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, grant UID/EMS/50022/2020, through IDMEC under LAETAinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Influence De La Géomorphologie Sur La Distribution Spatiale Des Peuplements De Boscia Senegalensis (Pers.) Lam. Ex Poir. Dans La Commune Rurale De Simiri (Ouest Niger)

B. senegalensis is a species with broad geographic distribution in the Sahel, especially in Niger, thanks to its special anatomical structures to withstand drought, high temperatures and poor soils. It presents and a heterogeneous distribution in the following areas topographic levels characteristic of the western Niger. This paper aimed to assess the distribution of B. senegalensis and its relationship with woody species through the description of the spatial structure of the point process following toposequences by Ripley's method stands. The study highlighted the gregarious distribution of B. senegalensis and the close relationship between B. senegalensis and other species. Indeed, the species is in competition with other species on the plateau where water resources are scarce. But B. senegalensis tolerate these species on the slopes and in the shallows where water resources are relatively large

Sistemas de gerenciamento de energia residencial com técnicas de controle preditivo baseadas em modelos baseados em ramificações e vinculadas

At a global level, buildings constitute one of the most significant energy-consuming sectors. Current energy policies in the EU and the U.S. emphasize that buildings, particularly those in the residential sector, should employ renewable energy and storage and efficiently control the total energy system. In this work, we propose a Home Energy Management System (HEMS) by employing a Model-Based Predictive Control (MBPC) framework, implemented using a Branch-and-Bound (BAB) algorithm. We discuss the selection of different parameters, such as time-step, to employ prediction and control horizons and the effect of the weather in the system performance. We compare the economic performance of the proposed approach against a real PV-battery system existing in a household equipped with several IoT devices, concluding that savings larger than 30% can be obtained, whether on sunny or cloudy days. To the best of our knowledge, these are excellent values compared with existing solutions available in the literature.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Low frequency-based energy disaggregation using sliding windows and deep learning

The issue of controlling energy use is becoming extremely important. People’s behavior is one of the most important elements influencing electric energy usage in the residential sector, one of the most significant energy consumers globally. The building’s energy usage could be reduced by using feedback programs. Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) approaches have emerged as one of the most viable options for energy disaggregation. This paper presents a deep learning algorithm using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models for energy disaggregation. It employs low-frequency sampling power data collected in a private house. The aggregated active and reactive powers are used as inputs in a sliding window. The obtained results show that the proposed approach gives high performances in term of recognizing the devices' operating states and predicting the energy consumed by each device