DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Scalable tuning of building models to hourly data

Abstract

Energy models of existing buildings are unreliable unless calibrated so they correlate well with actual energy usage. Manual tuning requires a skilled professional, is prohibitively expensive for small projects, imperfect, non-repeatable, non-transferable, and not scalable to the dozens of sensor channels that smart meters, smart appliances, and cheap/ubiquitous sensors are beginning to make available today. A scalable, automated methodology is needed to quickly and intelligently calibrate building energy models to all available data, increase the usefulness of those models, and facilitate speed-and-scale penetration of simulation-based capabilities into the marketplace for actualized energy savings. The "Autotune'' project is a novel, model-agnostic methodology which leverages supercomputing, large simulation ensembles, and big data mining with multiple machine learning algorithms to allow automatic calibration of simulations that match measured experimental data in a way that is deployable on commodity hardware. This paper shares several methodologies employed to reduce the combinatorial complexity to a computationally tractable search problem for hundreds of input parameters. Furthermore, accuracy metrics are provided which quantify model error to measured data for either monthly or hourly electrical usage from a highly-instrumented, emulated-occupancy research home.

Authors:
 [1];  [2]
  1. Jacksonville State Univ., Jacksonville, AL (United States)
  2. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Energy Efficiency Office. Building Technologies Office
OSTI Identifier:
1185507
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1247854
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC05-00OR22725; CEBT105; BT0201000; DEAC05-00OR22725
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Energy (Oxford)
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: Energy (Oxford); Journal Volume: 84; Journal ID: ISSN 0360-5442
Publisher:
Elsevier
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION; 97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING; autotune; energy plus; calibration; optimization; evolutionary computation

Citation Formats

Garrett, Aaron, and New, Joshua Ryan. Scalable tuning of building models to hourly data. United States: N. p., 2015. Web. doi:10.1016/j.energy.2015.03.014.
Garrett, Aaron, & New, Joshua Ryan. Scalable tuning of building models to hourly data. United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.03.014
Garrett, Aaron, and New, Joshua Ryan. Tue . "Scalable tuning of building models to hourly data". United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.03.014. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1185507.
@article{osti_1185507,
title = {Scalable tuning of building models to hourly data},
author = {Garrett, Aaron and New, Joshua Ryan},
abstractNote = {Energy models of existing buildings are unreliable unless calibrated so they correlate well with actual energy usage. Manual tuning requires a skilled professional, is prohibitively expensive for small projects, imperfect, non-repeatable, non-transferable, and not scalable to the dozens of sensor channels that smart meters, smart appliances, and cheap/ubiquitous sensors are beginning to make available today. A scalable, automated methodology is needed to quickly and intelligently calibrate building energy models to all available data, increase the usefulness of those models, and facilitate speed-and-scale penetration of simulation-based capabilities into the marketplace for actualized energy savings. The "Autotune'' project is a novel, model-agnostic methodology which leverages supercomputing, large simulation ensembles, and big data mining with multiple machine learning algorithms to allow automatic calibration of simulations that match measured experimental data in a way that is deployable on commodity hardware. This paper shares several methodologies employed to reduce the combinatorial complexity to a computationally tractable search problem for hundreds of input parameters. Furthermore, accuracy metrics are provided which quantify model error to measured data for either monthly or hourly electrical usage from a highly-instrumented, emulated-occupancy research home.},
doi = {10.1016/j.energy.2015.03.014},
journal = {Energy (Oxford)},
number = ,
volume = 84,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Mar 31 00:00:00 EDT 2015},
month = {Tue Mar 31 00:00:00 EDT 2015}
}

Journal Article:

Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 10 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Save / Share:

Works referenced in this record:

Effectiveness of single and multiple energy retrofit measures on the energy consumption of office buildings
journal, August 2011


Accuracy of home energy rating systems
journal, April 2000


History and development of validation with the ESP-r simulation program
journal, April 2008


Calibrating a combined energy systems analysis and controller design method with empirical data
journal, August 2013


A global model for residential energy use: Uncertainty in calibration to regional data
journal, January 2010


An introduction to simulated evolutionary optimization
journal, January 1994

  • Fogel, D. B.
  • IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, Vol. 5, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1109/72.265956

What is evolutionary computation?
journal, February 2000


Works referencing / citing this record:

Building simulation: Ten challenges
journal, April 2018