Electricity Consumption Patterns Research Articles

Anomaly Detection in Smart Electric Meters for Detecting Faults and Misuse of Electric Energy Consumption

The emergence of Smart Electric Meters (SEMs) has revolutionized energy management, providing real-time data collection and monitoring capabilities. However, ensuring the accuracy and security of this data presents challenges. Anomaly detection in electric energy consumption patterns is crucial for identifying issues like technical faults, erroneous billing, and misuse of electricity. Our project offers an Anomaly Detection System that leverages data analytics and machine learning to scrutinize SEM data. By analyzing historical patterns, the system distinguishes anomalies from routine fluctuations, triggering alerts when irregularities are detected. This system enhances the reliability and security of electric energy consumption data, fostering a more efficient and sustainable energy sector. Key Words: Anomaly Detection, Smart electric Meters, Fault Detection, Energy Misuse.

Improving Electricity Theft Detection Using Electricity Information Collection System and Customers’ Consumption Patterns

Electricity theft detection (ETD) techniques employed to identify fraudulent consumers often fail to accurately pinpoint electricity thieves in real time. The patterns associated with electricity use are leveraged to identify anomalies indicative of electricity theft. However, challenges in the benchmark ETD include overfitting and a high incidence of false positives (FPs) resulting from incorrect usage patterns formed by considering only electricity consumption patterns without accounting for external factors that contribute to variations in normal consumption patterns. Further investigation is required to precisely detect instances of electricity theft, thereby minimizing nontechnical losses and forecasting future electricity demand to maintain a stable supply. This study employs a master energy meter located on the transformer side to monitor the amount of energy distributed to the region. Zones with a high likelihood of energy theft are detected by comparing the sum of readings from all the smart meters with the readings from the master energy meter installed on the HV of the substation transformer within the same electric feeder. Ensemble XGBoost machine-learning algorithm and K-Means algorithm are used for the classification of malicious and nonmalicious samples and grouping similar types of consumers together, respectively. This makes the proposed model resistant to false-positive rates caused by changes in usage patterns that aren’t done on purpose. Furthermore, energy thieves are identified by detecting anomalies in consumption behavior while maintaining constant internal and external environmental variables. This novel model proposed here mitigates the FP rate found in the present research of electricity usage data. Our approach outperforms support vector machines, convolution neural network, and logistic regression in simulations. Precision, F1-score, recall, Matthews Correlation Coefficient, Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC)-Area Under The Curve (AUC), and Precision Recal (PR)-Area Under The Curve (AUC) validate our model. The simulation results show that the proposed K-Means-LSTM-XGBoost model improved the classifier’s F1-score, precision, and recall to 93.75%, 95.16%, and 92.38%, respectively. Our model classifies huge time series data with high precision and can be utilized by the utility for real time electricity theft detection.

Quantum support vector machine for forecasting house energy consumption: a comparative study with deep learning models

The Smart Grid operates autonomously, facilitating the smooth integration of diverse power generation sources into the grid, thereby ensuring a continuous, reliable, and high-quality supply of electricity to end users. One key focus within the realm of smart grid applications is the Home Energy Management System (HEMS), which holds significant importance given the fluctuating availability of generation and the dynamic nature of loading conditions. This paper presents an overview of HEMS and the methodologies utilized for load forecasting. It introduces a novel approach employing Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM) for predicting periodic power consumption, leveraging the AMPD2 dataset. In the establishment of a microgrid, various factors such as energy consumption patterns of household appliances, solar irradiance, and overall load are taken into account in dataset creation. In the realm of load forecasting in Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS), the Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM) stands out from other methods due to its unique approach and capabilities. Unlike traditional forecasting methods, QSVM leverages quantum computing principles to handle complex and nonlinear electricity consumption patterns. QSVM demonstrates superior accuracy by effectively capturing intricate relationships within the data, leading to more precise predictions. Its ability to adapt to diverse datasets and produce significantly low error values, such as RMSE and MAE, showcases its efficiency in forecasting electricity load consumption in smart grids. Moreover, the QSVM model’s exceptional flexibility and performance, as evidenced by achieving an accuracy of 97.3% on challenging datasets like AMpds2, highlight its distinctive edge over conventional forecasting techniques, making it a promising solution for enhancing forecasting accuracy in HEMS.The article provides a brief summary of HEMS and load forecasting techniques, demonstrating and comparing them with deep learning models to showcase the efficacy of the proposed algorithms.

Research on non-intrusive load decomposition model based on parallel multi-scale attention mechanism and its application in smart grid

This paper presents the MUSENILM model, a non-intrusive load decomposition model incorporating a parallel multi-scale attention mechanism to enhance energy monitoring and management in smart grids. The core innovation of the proposed model is its ability to extract multi-scale features, enhancing the model's understanding of time series data and achieving significant performance improvements on the UK-DALE and REDD public datasets. Specifically, when MUSENILM identifies the fridge electricity consumption pattern on the UK-DALE public dataset, compared to previous models, the accuracy improves from 88% to 91%, and the F1 score increases from 87% to 90%; on the load decomposition tasks of the remaining four appliances, the F1 scores are all improved, while the mean absolute error (MAE) and cumulative absolute error (SAE) for the five appliances are also reduced. Additionally, it shows better results compared to previous models on the REDD dataset. Moreover, when the MUSENILM model is transplanted to embedded devices and applied in smart grids, it can effectively identify illegal lithium battery charging events of electric bicycles in different scenarios, which is crucial for ensuring grid security and optimizing energy distribution. This research not only provides an efficient method for the field of NILM but also offers practical solutions for violation monitoring and management in smart grids.

Matchmaking in Off-Grid Energy System Planning: A Novel Approach for Integrating Residential Electricity Demands and Productive Use of Electricity

Off-grid electrification planning increasingly recognizes the importance of productive use of electricity (PUE) to promote community value creation and (financial) project sustainability. To ensure a sustainable and efficient integration in the community and energy system, PUE assets must be carefully evaluated to match both the community needs and the residential electricity demand patterns. We propose a novel methodology interlinking qualitative interviews, statistical analysis and energy system modeling to optimize decision making for PUE integration in off-grid energy systems in rural Madagascar by aligning relevant PUE effectively with anticipated residential electricity demand patterns based on socio-economic determinants of the community. We find that a possible contribution of the PUE to reducing the electricity costs depends significantly on three factors: (1) The residential electricity consumption patterns, which are influenced by the socio-economic composition of the community; (2) The degree of flexibility of (i) PUE assets and (ii) operational preferences of the PUE user; and (3) The capacity of community members to finance and operate PUE assets. Our study demonstrates that significant cost reductions for PUE-integrated off-grid energy systems can be achieved by applying our proposed methodology. When matching PUE and residential consumption patterns, the integration of PUE assets in residential community energy systems can reduce the financial risk for operators, provided the PUE enterprise operates reliably and sustainably. We highlight that the consideration of local value chains and co-creation approaches are essential to ensure the energy system is addressing the community’s needs, creates value for the community, enhances the project’s financial sustainability and is achieving the overall objectives of decentralized energy system planning.

Investigation of a Building with Male and Female Residents to Achieve Equality of Thermal Sensation Associated with Rational Use of Exergy and Energy

The intensive use of air conditioning systems, primarily refrigerating, to promote thermal comfort in countries such as Brazil (a hot climate country) is changing the electrical energy consumption patterns and peak demand. Even with the increased number of appliances, we must learn to consume less energy to achieve similar outcomes with higher energy efficiency. Consequently, exergy analysis is used to evaluate the quality of these energy conversion systems. Four computational human thermal models were used to assess thermal comfort conditions: one man wearing lighter clothing, one man wearing traditional office clothing, and two women in the two types of clothing. We chose these four models since the body composition and basal metabolism rates for males and females differ. In addition, the insulation of clothes influences the temperature of the thermal environment, leading to a significantly lower percentage of people being unsatisfied, from 12.8% to values close to 5%. The outputs of these occupants are used as inputs for a computational model of the room to calculate its associated thermal loads and evaluate different temperature setpoints and their effects on thermal comfort and energy consumption. Results indicate that environmental temperatures above 24 °C and below 26 °C may lead to thermal comfort conditions, depending on the occupants’ clothing. Clothing would represent a thermal resistance of 0.7 CLO for men and women (when in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle) and 0.8 CLO for women in the follicular phase when the environment is at 25 °C. Therefore, there is a significant reduction in the compression power of the central cooling system by about 2.2% compared to 24 °C and around 8% compared to ambient temperatures around 21 °C.

Analysis of patterns of electricity consumption in mining and processing enterprises

Mining and processing enterprises are large consumers of electricity, with a large share of energy costs in the cost of production. Thus, the price of electricity in the cost of production takes higher values for Hydrometallurgical Plant 1. In this regard, the development of energy consumption models that can be used as a basis for managing the energy consumption process is an important component of learning. It is important to analyze the energy consumption to estimate the electricity consumption under different operating conditions of the mining industry. In order to study and plan electricity consumption and develop methods for regulating electricity consumption, it is necessary to determine the place of each technological stage in the energy consumption balance [1]. This article examines the laws of electricity consumption in mining and processing enterprises. The study of such laws helps to determine the level of energy consumption management for the mining and processing plant.

Time-Stratified Analysis of Electricity Consumption: A Regression and Neural Network Approach in the Context of Turkey

This study aims to apply seasonality and temporal effects in the analysis of electricity consumption in Turkey as a case mixed with regression and neural network methodologies. The study goal is to increase knowledge about the features and trending forces behind electricity usage which provide informed recommendations for smart energy planning and regulation. Comparing and contrasting the regression and neural network models makes it possible to carry out a thorough analysis of the merits and demerits of each model. Moreover, the examination of the limits of the models and their performance in forecasting electricity consumption patterns over the long term is done. The results of this study have a significant impact on power forecasting techniques, and they have meaningful effects on the policymakers, planners and utilities in Turkey. Understanding the story of the use of electricity around the world is very important for the development of sustainable energy policies, resource provision, and the maintenance of reliable and smart energy networks in the country.

Machine learning-based electricity theft detection using support vector machines

Electricity theft is a serious issue that many nations face, especially in developing areas where non-technical losses can make up a significant percentage of the overall losses sustained by utilities. Electricity theft detection (ETD) is a very challenging task because it frequently introduces irregularities in customer electricity consumption patterns. In recent times, machine learning (ML) techniques have been investigated as a potential solution for ETD. In this research, author propose electricity theft detection based on four kernel functions of support vector machines (SVM). The proposed method analyzes the electricity consumption patterns and then predicts the category of the user. The kernel functions utilized includes polynomial, sigmoid, radial basis function (RBF) and linear kernel function. For experimentation and model training, a dataset of Pakistani utility company is used, which contains the electricity consumption information. The results highlight SVM method works well for accurate ETD. The detection accuracy of the various kernel functions of SVM is 83%, 79%, 80%, and 76% for RBF, polynomial, sigmoid, and linear kernel functions, respectively, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed SVM-based method for theft detection. By leveraging these ML-based methods, utility companies can strengthen their ability to detect and prevent electricity theft, leading to improved revenue management and dependability of services.

Residential net load interval prediction based on stacking ensemble learning

In response to the high uncertainty associated with residential net load due to the coupling of distributed photovoltaic generation and user demand, this paper proposed a novel cluster-based stacking ensemble learning model for net load interval prediction. Firstly, the k-means algorithm is employed to discover the similarity in user electricity consumption patterns. Then, a RIME optimization algorithm with local enhancement (LRIME) is developed to optimize the parameters and weights of the base learners in stacking ensemble learning. Subsequently, base learners with strong predictive capabilities and significant diversity are chosen as the first-layer predictive models, extreme learning machine (ELM) is utilized as the second-layer predictive model, ultimately resulting in the proposed stacking ensemble learning prediction model. And utilizing the bootstrap method to fit the volatility of point predictions, different prediction intervals are obtained at varying confidence levels, aiming to quantify the integrated uncertainty in photovoltaic generation and load. Testing on the open Ausgrid electricity load data in Australia provided robust validation of the proposed method's effectiveness. In comparison with other outstanding prediction models, the proposed ensemble model can effectively capture the uncertainty in integrating photovoltaic generation and user load.

Evaluation Model of Distributed Photovoltaic Utilization in Urban Built-Up Area

Photovoltaic (PV) power generation is emerging as a key aspect of the global shift towards a more sustainable energy mix. Nevertheless, existing assessment models predominantly concentrate on predicting the overall capacity of PV power generation, often neglecting temporal dynamics. Drawing upon the urban energy substitution rate, utilization rate, and power supply stability, this study has devised a comprehensive evaluation model for the utilization of distributed photovoltaic systems (SUS). This model integrates the quantification of spatio-temporal features inherent in urban settings and buildings. Using Hohhot city as a case study, this study conducted simulations to analyze how the installation of PV systems affects the electricity consumption patterns across different land plots within the urban core. The study additionally examines how urban planning influences the adoption of PV power, taking into account both the timing of PV power usage and the stage of PV technology development. The evaluation model surpasses the constraints of current urban PV assessments, which primarily emphasize enhancing power generation potential without adequately quantifying supply–demand dynamics or spatial and temporal variations. This breakthrough significantly improves the precision and reliability of assessing the efficiency of distributed PV systems. Its implications extend widely to subsequent comprehensive evaluations of urban PV applications.

A novel two‐stage method to detect non‐technical losses in smart grids

AbstractNumerous strategies have been proposed for the detection and prevention of non‐technical electricity losses due to fraudulent activities. Among these, machine learning algorithms and data‐driven techniques have gained prominence over traditional methodologies due to their superior performance, leading to a trend of increasing adoption in recent years. A novel two‐step process is presented for detecting fraudulent Non‐technical losses (NTLs) in smart grids. The first step involves transforming the time‐series data with additional extracted features derived from the publicly available State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) dataset. The features are extracted after identifying abrupt changes in electricity consumption patterns using the sum of finite differences, the Auto‐Regressive Integrated Moving Average model, and the Holt‐Winters model. Following this, five distinct classification models are used to train and evaluate a fraud detection model using the SGCC dataset. The evaluation results indicate that the most effective model among the five is the Gradient Boosting Machine. This two‐step approach enables the classification models to surpass previously reported high‐performing methods in terms of accuracy, F1‐score, and other relevant metrics for non‐technical loss detection.

Enhancing power utilization analysis: detecting aberrant patterns of electricity consumption

Enhancing power utilization analysis: detecting aberrant patterns of electricity consumption

Multi‐Task Residential Short‐Term Load Prediction Based on Contrastive Learning

AbstractLoad forecasting is crucial for the operation and planning of electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. In the context of short‐term electricity load prediction for residential users, single‐task learning methods fail to consider the relationship among multiple residential users and have limited feature extraction capabilities for residential load data. It is challenging to obtain sufficient information from individual residential user load predictions, resulting in poor prediction performance. To address these issues, we propose a framework for multi‐task residential short‐term load prediction based on contrastive learning. Firstly, clustering techniques are used to select residential users with similar electricity consumption patterns. Secondly, contrastive learning is employed for pre‐training, extracting trend and seasonal feature representations of load sequences, thereby enhancing the feature extraction capability for residential load Feature. Lastly, a multi‐task learning prediction framework is utilized to learn shared information among multiple residential users' loads, enabling short‐term load prediction for multiple residences. The proposed load prediction framework has been implemented on two real‐world load data sets, and the experimental results demonstrate that it effectively reduces the prediction errors for residential load prediction. © 2024 Institute of Electrical Engineer of Japan and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

DBSCAN-based energy users clustering for performance enhancement of deep learning model

Background: Due to rapid progress in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning, the power grids are transforming into Smart Grids (SG) which are versatile, reliable, intelligent and stable. The power consumption of the energy users is varying throughout the day as well as in different days of the week. Power consumption forecasting is of vital importance for the sustainable management and operation of SG. Methodology: In this work, the aim is to apply clustering for dividing a smart residential community into several group of similar profile energy user, which will be effective for developing and training representative deep neural network (DNN) models for power load forecasting of users in respective groups. The DNN models is composed of convolutional neural network (CNN) followed by LSTM layers for feature extraction and sequence learning respectively. The DNN For experimentation, the Smart Grid Smart City (SGSC) project database is used and its energy users are grouped into various clusters. Results: The residential community is divided into four groups of customers based on the chosen criterion where Group 1, 2, 3 and 4 contains 14 percent, 22 percent, 19 percent and 45 percent users respectively. Almost half of the population (45 percent) of the considered residential community exhibits less than 23 outliers in their electricity consumption patterns. The rest of the population is divided into three groups, where specialized deep learning models developed and trained for respective groups are able to achieve higher forecasting accuracy. The results of our proposed approach will assist researchers and utility companies by requiring fewer specialized deep-learning models for accurate forecasting of users who belong to various groups of similar-profile energy consumption.

A Mixed-Methods Approach for Evaluating the Influence of Residential Practices for Thermal Comfort on Electricity Consumption in Auroville, India

With rapid global economic growth and a rise in disposable household income, particularly within a progressively warming planet, the escalating demand for energy to achieve thermal comfort has become a salient concern in the Global South, notably in emerging economies like India. This burgeoning need for cooling solutions has not only underscored the vital role of energy consumption but has also accentuated the imperative of comprehending the ensuing implications for electricity policy and strategic planning, particularly within the ambit of the Global South. This study explored the nuanced landscape of active cooling within an intentional community, Auroville, in southern India, aiming to discern the factors underpinning household preferences and practices in the pursuit of thermal comfort. Employing a mixed-methods approach, this study contributed empirically and methodologically to the interdisciplinary discourse by analysing residential electricity consumption patterns and cooling practices within selected households in the specified community. The study unfolded in three methodological stages: firstly, an analysis of climatic data coupled with an environmental stress index (ESI) assessment; secondly, the monitoring of end-user electricity consumption followed by rigorous data analysis; and lastly, the utilisation of qualitative in-depth interviews and observational techniques. This study’s outcome yielded empirical insights into the unprecedented shifts in the ESI for Auroville since 2014. Furthermore, the study unravelled the intricate complexities inherent in occupant behaviour within residential structures, thereby offering valuable insights into the practices that shape householders’ cooling preferences. This research enriched the understanding of the dynamics of energy consumption in the pursuit of thermal comfort and contributes to the broader discourse on sustainable development and energy policy in the context of climate change.

MILET: multimodal integration and linear enhanced transformer for electricity price forecasting

The electricity market is a complex and dynamic environment characterized by a multitude of factors that influence electricity prices. Accurate and reliable electricity price forecasting (EPF) is crucial for market participants, including power generators, consumers, and policymakers. Electricity prices are influenced by temporal dependencies and electricity consumption patterns. Therefore, dependencies across different feature dimensions (cross-dimensional dependencies) and temporal trend information are essential. To address the aforementioned issues, we propose Multimodal Integration and Linear Enhanced Transformer (MILET), which combines cross-dimensional dependencies with single-dimensional modal features. First, we decompose electricity price data into three regular modals using Variational Mode Decomposition and Sample Entropy. This approach enables us to uncover the intrinsic patterns within the variable, thereby simplifying the complexity of the data series. Then integrate these three modals and the original dataset into a five-channel encoder (Modal Integration Encoder, MIE) with both single and multi-dimensional information. MIE is composed of Overall Two-Stage Attention (OTSA) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), where OTSA handles cross-dimensional dependencies, and LSTM addresses long-term dependencies. Additionally, we capture trend information in electricity consumption features through linear layers and linearly integrate the data to obtain the forecasting results. Extensive experimental results on five electricity price datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of MILET compared to state-of-the-art techniques. Our code is available at https://github.com/Lisen-Zhao/MILET/tree/master.

AN AGENT-BASED COMPUTATIONAL MODEL ON HOUSEHOLD ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION IN INDIAN CITIES

ABSTRACT Traditional methods of planning and managing cities often adopt a simplified linear approach to understanding their composition and functioning. These approaches have led to the creation of many undesirable and non-functional cities. However, over the last few decades, there has been a radical shift in the approach to investigating cities through the adoption of complexity science and its various concepts. Unfortunately, this paradigm shift has been limited to only a handful of developed Western nations. This study proposes an extendable agent-based computational model for assessing household electricity consumption patterns in cities of developing nations. The model is demonstrated using an urban precinct in India as a representative case. It simulates the monthly electricity consumption of an urban precinct in Nagpur by combining the significant factors impacting household electricity consumption in developing nations, with the household's electricity consumption process in relation to outdoor weather conditions, and the heterogeneity in occupants’ behavior. The predictive validation of the model using the “BehaviorSpace” tool yielded promising results, with the model consistently and accurately predicting the growth of variables and household electricity consumption patterns. The model also successfully generated multiple future scenarios, showcasing its capacity to forecast the future implications of policy interventions. The simulation results indicated that household electricity consumption in Indian cities is driven by population growth and income levels. Additionally, it suggests that widely practiced rooftop solar panel installation policies may not be a viable approach to achieving sustainability in this sector. This study finds that the “emergent urbanism” approach has the potential to revitalize the urban energy planning process through an effective framework for comprehensively understanding the phenomena and addressing its various complexities.

A multi‐layer–multi‐player game model in electricity market

AbstractHere, a novel tri‐level energy market model aimed at addressing the challenges posed by demand side management (DSM) in the electricity distribution company (EDC) is introduced. DSM has emerged as a new strategy employed by EDCs to manage and control electricity demand by encouraging end‐users to modify their electricity consumption patterns. This is achieved through the participation of demand response (DR) aggregators, which play a crucial role in assisting end‐users with strategies and technologies to reduce their electricity consumption during peak hours. The proposed tri‐level energy market model consists of four distinct players: EDC, microgrids, aggregators, customers. The interactions between these four actors are modelled within a tri‐level game framework, where the EDC and aggregators act as leaders, and the micro‐grids and customers are followers. This multi‐level and multi‐player game structure allows for a more realistic representation of the complexities involved in DSM programs within the energy market. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, a real case study is utilized, showing that the new model better resembles real‐life market conditions. The results illustrate how the tri‐level energy market model can significantly reduce demand fluctuations during peak hours, leading to improved efficiency and effectiveness within DSM programs.

Impacts of COVID-19 lockdown period on the Algerian power grid demand

The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) spread out at the end of 2019 has sadly caused millions of human losses and hundreds of millions of cases and stressful health situations. As a result, governments forced the worldwide population to stay confined and change their social activities and working behaviors. Under such conditions all economic sectors have been impacted, therefore global electricity consumption pattern has changed consequently. The object of this study is to calculate energy drop for such circumstances to make strategies to face such events in the future. The study we conducted during the period of confinement aims to identify the effects of the Corona epidemic on electricity consumption in Algeria by emphasizing four months (March, April, May, and June) for four years (2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021) by comparing monthly load curves and calculating load deviation for each month.