A state of the art review on the prediction of building energy consumption using data-driven technique and evolutionary algorithms

Energy consumption forecasting for buildings plays a significant role in building energy management, conservation and fault diagnosis. Owing to the ease of use and adaptability of optimal solution seeking, data-driven techniques have proved to be accurate and efficient tools in recent years. This study provides a comprehensive review on the existing data-driven approaches for building energy forecasting, such as regression models, artificial neural networks, support vector machines, fuzzy models, grey models, etc. On this basis, the paper puts emphasis to the discussion on evolutionary algorithms hybridized models that combine evolutionary algorithms with regular data-driven models to improve prediction accuracy and robustness. Various combinations of such hybrid models are classified and their characteristics are analyzed. Finally, a detailed discussion on the advantages and challenges of current predictive models is provided.

Practical Application: Building energy consumption prediction is important for building energy management, efficiency and fault diagnosis. For existing buildings, multisourced, heterogeneous or inadequate data-driven models may lead to convergence problem or poor model accuracy. To this end, a state of art review on building energy forecasting technique is helpful for related professionals in the building industry.