Data Mining for Accurately Estimating Residential Natural Gas Energy Consumption and Savings Using a Random Forest Approach

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Naji, Adel Ali
Language:English
Published: University of Dayton / OhioLINK 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1557422487896673
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spelling ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-dayton15574224878966732021-08-03T07:11:12Z Data Mining for Accurately Estimating Residential Natural Gas Energy Consumption and Savings Using a Random Forest Approach Naji, Adel Ali Mechanical Engineering Economics Energy Random Forest Building Energy Efficiency Data Mining Levelized Cost of Fuel Saving Worst-to-First Strategy Cost effective energy efficiency improvements in residential buildings could yield annual electricity savings of approximately 30 percent within this sector for the United States. Furthermore, such investment can create millions of direct and indirect jobs throughout the economy. Unfortunately, realizing these savings is difficult. One of the impediments for realization is the means by which savings can be estimated. The prevalent approach is to use energy models to estimate. However, actual energy savings are more often than not over-predicted by energy models, leading to wariness on the part of potential investors which include the residents themselves.A driver for this research is 500 residential buildings with known geometrical and historical energy data owned by the University of Dayton. Further, the energy characteristics of these buildings are knowable. This housing stock offers significant diversity in size (ranging from a floor area of 715to 2800 square feet), age (from the early 1900s to new construction) and energy effectiveness, the latter occurring as a result of gradual improvements made to residences over the past 15 years. In the summer of 2015 energy and building data audits were conducted on a subset of 139 homes. The audit documented the areas of the walls and attic, the amount and type of insulation in the walls and attic, areas and types of windows, floor heights, maximum occupancy, appliance (refrigerator, range, oven) specifications, heating ventilation air-conditioning system specifications domestic hot water equipment specifications, interior attic penetration area, and the presence of a basement.A data mining approach was used for developing the Random Forest (RF) model to predict energy consumption in a group of single family houses based upon knowledge of residential energy characteristics, historical energy consumption, occupancy and building geometrical data, as well as inferred energy characteristics from energy consumption data. The model was used to estimate savings and develop a cost implementation model from discrete measures for each residence. Thus, the cost effectiveness of each possible measure could be assessed. From these, prioritized energy reduction measures among all possible measures for all residences could be identified based upon a `worst-to-first’ strategy in order to achieve community-scale energy (and carbon) savings most cost effectively. The results when extrapolated 45,000 single family houses in Dayton, Ohio show that a preliminary investment in energy efficiency of $26 million can achieve annual energy cost savings of $2.21M per year. As or more importantly, an Economic Input-Output analysis reveals a total sequential economic impact of $41.2M from the investment. Thus, this approach offers significant and indisputable local impact. 2019-05-30 English text University of Dayton / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1557422487896673 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1557422487896673 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.
collection NDLTD
language English
sources NDLTD
topic Mechanical Engineering
Economics
Energy
Random Forest
Building Energy Efficiency
Data Mining
Levelized Cost of Fuel Saving
Worst-to-First Strategy
spellingShingle Mechanical Engineering
Economics
Energy
Random Forest
Building Energy Efficiency
Data Mining
Levelized Cost of Fuel Saving
Worst-to-First Strategy
Naji, Adel Ali
Data Mining for Accurately Estimating Residential Natural Gas Energy Consumption and Savings Using a Random Forest Approach
author Naji, Adel Ali
author_facet Naji, Adel Ali
author_sort Naji, Adel Ali
title Data Mining for Accurately Estimating Residential Natural Gas Energy Consumption and Savings Using a Random Forest Approach
title_short Data Mining for Accurately Estimating Residential Natural Gas Energy Consumption and Savings Using a Random Forest Approach
title_full Data Mining for Accurately Estimating Residential Natural Gas Energy Consumption and Savings Using a Random Forest Approach
title_fullStr Data Mining for Accurately Estimating Residential Natural Gas Energy Consumption and Savings Using a Random Forest Approach
title_full_unstemmed Data Mining for Accurately Estimating Residential Natural Gas Energy Consumption and Savings Using a Random Forest Approach
title_sort data mining for accurately estimating residential natural gas energy consumption and savings using a random forest approach
publisher University of Dayton / OhioLINK
publishDate 2019
url http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1557422487896673
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