Daily power demand prediction for buildings at a large scale using a hybrid of physics-based model and generative adversarial network

Power demand prediction for buildings at a large scale is required for power grid operation.The bottom-up prediction method using physics-based models is popular,but has some limitations such as a heavy workload on model creation and long computing time.Top-down methods based on data driven models are fast,but less accurate.Considering the similarity of power demand patterns of single buildings and the superiority of generative adversarial network(GAN),this paper proposes a new method(E-GAN),which combines a physics-based model(EnergyPlus)and a data-driven model(GAN),to predict the daily power demand for buildings at a large scale.The new E-GAN method selects a small number of typical buildings and utilizes EnergyPlus models to predict their power demands.Utilizing the prediction for those typical buildings,the GAN then is adopted to forecast the power demands of a large number of buildings.To verify the proposed method,the E-GAN is used to predict 24-hour power demands for a set of residential buildings.The results show that(1)4.3%of physics-based models in each building category are required to ensure the prediction accuracy;(2)compared with the physics-based model,the E-GAN can predict power demand accurately with only 5%error(measured by mean absolute percentage error,MAPE)while using only approximately 9%of the computing time;and(3)compared with data-driven models(e.g.,support vector regression,extreme learning machine,and polynomial regression model),E-GAN demonstrates at least 60%reduction in prediction error measured by MAPE.