A Comparison of NARX and BP Neural Network in Short-Term Building Cooling Load Prediction

Abstract

A comparison of nonlinear autoregression with exogenous inputs (NARX) neural network and back-propagation (BP) neural network in short-term prediction of building cooling load is presented in this dissertation. Both predictive models have been applied in a group of commercial buildings and analysis of prediction errors has been highlighted. Training and testing data for both prediction models have been generated from DeST (Designers Simulation Toolkits) with climate data of Shanghai. The simulation results indicate that NARX method can achieve better accuracy and generalization ability than traditional method of BP neural network. This work provides a key support in smooth and optimizing control in air-conditioning system.