Activity based energy demand modeling for residential buildings

Statistics reveal that almost one-fourth of the overall power consumption in the US is by residential buildings; this number is only increasing. In order to manage the growing demand for energy, there is a need for energy system optimization, which would require a realistic, high resolution energy-demand model. To achieve this goal, we propose a modeling framework aimed at generating household energy demand profiles based on individual-level energy consuming activities. The model associates appliance usage for each household activity and calculates energy consumption based on the appliance energy rating and duration of activity. We use this information to generate a household level energy demand profile for roughly 63,000 households and discuss the possible uses of generating residential energy demand patterns. This paper provides a novel way to resolve correlational and consistency problems in the generation of individual-level and household-level “shared” activities which occur due to household members´ interactions.