Development of a hybrid VRF system energy consumption prediction model based on data partitioning and swarm intelligence algorithm

Abstract

Accurately forecasting energy consumption is beneficial and pivotal for effectively managing variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems. Changes in energy consumption provide an intuitive representation of the operating condition and the impact of possible faults. Energy consumption prediction is fundamental in energy conservation tasks such as fault diagnosis. Currently, many energy consumption prediction model have been applied for HVAC system widely. However black-box energy prediction models applied to VRF systems are still relatively few and crude. This study therefore proposed a hybrid energy consumption prediction method for VRF systems based on data partitioning and swarm intelligence algorithm. The model was based on back propagation neural network (BPNN), and utilized data partitioning techniques to identify the energy consumption patterns of the VRF system. For each pattern, a BPNN sub-model was trained using operating and energy consumption data of a VRF system. Then, swarm intelligence algorithm is adopted to determine the optimal architecture of each BPNN sub-model. The results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid models can achieve better prediction performance than single models like BP Neural Network. Root mean square error and mean absolute percentage error of the proposed predictive model is 202.49 and 1.95%, which has a 31.3% and 45.5% decrease compared to single BPNN model. At the same time, it is enlightening for other researchers to study the potential of data partitioning algorithm and swarm intelligence algorithm in the field of VRF system energy consumption prediction.