Energy Conversion and Management 68 (2013) 20–27

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Energy Conversion and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Development and validation of a simplified online cooling load prediction strategy

for a super high-rise building in Hong Kong
Yongjun Sun, Shengwei Wang ⇑, Fu Xiao
Department of Building Services Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Cooling load prediction is important and essential for many building energy efficient controls, such as
Received 22 October 2012 morning start control of chiller plant. However, most of the existing methods are either too complicated
Received in revised form 13 December 2012 or of unsatisfactory performance for online applications. A simplified online cooling load prediction
Accepted 4 January 2013
method is therefore developed in this study. The method firstly selects a reference day for each day
Available online 4 February 2013
according to load profile similarity. The load profile of the reference day is taken as the initial prediction
result of the cooling load. Secondly, the most correlated weather data is identified and its hourly predic-
Keywords:
tions are used to calibrate the initial load prediction result based on the reference day. Lastly, the accu-
Commercial building
Online load prediction
racy of the calibrated load prediction is enhanced using the prediction errors of the previous 2 h. The
Weather prediction developed load prediction method is validated in the case studies using the weather data purchased from
Correlation identification the Hong Kong Observatory and the historical data from a super high-rise building in Hong Kong. The
load prediction method is of low computation load and satisfactory accuracy and it can be used for online
application of building load prediction.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Cooling load prediction is essential for many building energy
efficient controls, such as the morning start control of chiller plant.
It is essential to determine the right number of operating chillers
and the proper pre-cooling duration in the morning start control.
The right chiller number and the proper pre-cooling duration can
help minimize the system energy consumption for cooling down
building indoor room temperature to its desired level before occu-
pancy [1]. Building cooling load prediction needs to consider both
internal and external loads. The external load is mainly influenced
by the weather conditions, such as temperature, relative humidity
(RH), solar radiation, cloudiness, while internal one is mainly influ-
enced by building occupancy and the associated operations of the
electrical equipment [2].
Many efforts have been made to develop building cooling load
prediction methods. They can be generally categorized into three
groups, i.e. physical model, black box model and gray box model.
Physical models for cooling load prediction are those developed
based on the detailed simulation of heat and mass transfer pro-
cesses. Hence, the details of the targeted building, such as orienta-
tion, building structure, wall material, occupancy schedule, need to
be well considered. Additionally, various types of weather data
including temperature, RH, solar radiation and cloudiness are also
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 27665858; fax: +852 27746146.
E-mail address: beswwang@polyu.edu.hk (S. Wang).
required for load predictions if such models used. Due to the good
reliability of physical models, some of them have been accepted as
industry standards, such as Energy Plus, DOE-2 and TRNSYS. How-
ever, for online applications, physical model has its inherent short-
coming. Firstly, the development and validation of a physical
model are difficult due to so many details involved. Secondly, it re-
quires a considerable amount of site data for identifications of
many parameters before its practical applications. Sometimes,
these training data are hard to obtain or even missing. The heavy
computation load is another limitation for the online application
of physical model in load prediction.
With regard to black box models, many studies were conducted
on their offline application [3–9]. In early time as the computing
technology was not advanced, simple transfer function was em-
ployed to predict building cooling load [3]. With the advancement
of computing technology, more sophisticated methods were devel-
oped. For instance, artificial neural network (ANN) is one of the
commonly used methods due to its strong capability of learning.
Ben-Nakhi and Mahmoud [4] adopted a general regression neural
network (GRNN) method to predict the cooling loads of three
buildings with different occupancy densities and orientations.
More than three years data, i.e. from 1997 to 2000, were used to
train the network. Parametric studies were also performed to opti-
mize GRNN design parameters for achieving best prediction results
for each building. The offline test results demonstrated the
prediction results were of acceptable accuracy. Unlike other local
optimization approaches to identifying parameters in ANN, a

0196-8904/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2013.01.002
 Y. Sun et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 68 (2013) 20–27 21

global optimization method called ‘‘Modal Trimming Method’’ was diction. The use of the errors enables the final load predication to
developed and used to identify the values of the model parameters adapt to those predictable and unpredictable changes, e.g. the sea-
[5]. Hou et al. [6] developed a cooling load prediction method sonal change of building cooling load and the tenant number var-
which integrated rough sets (RSs) theory with ANN using a data- iation/building internal retrofitting. This paper therefore proposes
fusion technique. The prediction accuracy was improved due to a simplified load prediction method considering the involvement
the application of RS theory which automatically selected the most reduction of factors with minor impacts, internal load and calibra-
relevant influential factors. Elkateb et al. [7] introduced a time in- tion using previous error. The method is used in a super high-rise
dex feature to enhance the load prediction performance using a commercial building, i.e. International Commerce Center-ICC, in
fuzzy neural network algorithm. Some other data-driven methods Hong Kong. The development and validation of the developed
were also proposed to predict hourly/daily load. Li et al. [8] used method using the site data from ICC are present in the case study
the support vector machine (SVM) to predict hourly building cool- part.
ing load and compared its performance with another ANN method
in [9]. The simulation results demonstrated that the SVM method
2. Framework of the load prediction method
can achieve a better performance in terms of accuracy and gener-
alization than the traditional back-propagation neural network
The framework of the simplified load prediction method is as
model. Another data-driven approach for the prediction of daily
shown in Fig. 1. The method is accomplished in three steps. Step
steam load was developed in [10]. Data mining algorithm was
one is the initial load prediction based on a selected reference
adopted to select the important parameters. The neural network
day. The reference day is selected for each day based on occupancy
with five multi-layer perceptron (MLP) demonstrated the best per-
similarity principle. The load of the selected reference day is taken
formance among all the tested algorithms and it was therefore se-
as the initial load prediction result of the targeted day. Step two is
lected to develop the predictive model. Considering the practical
a calibration of the initial load prediction result using hourly pre-
constraints of the existing energy management applications,
diction results of the selected weather data. It should be mentioned
Monte Carlo algorithm was chosen to investigate uncertainty prop-
that only the weather data most correlated to actual load is se-
agation of the model. For these black box models, one major prob-
lected. The correlation strength between each type of weather data
lem is that the reliability and accuracy of the prediction results
and actual load is identified using the correlation coefficient algo-
mainly depend on the selected training data. If the prediction situ-
rithm. The last step is to enhance the accuracy of the calibrated
ation is outside the training data range, the predicted result may
load prediction using the errors of previous 2 h between the cali-
become unreliable or even unreasonable. Such shortcoming limits
brated load prediction and the actual load measurements.
the online applications of black box models in building cooling load
The reference day selection approach and correlation strength
prediction.
identification algorithm are presented in Sections 2.1 and 2.2
In contrast, gray box model has drawn more attention from
respectively. In Section 2.3, the associated calibration algorithm
researchers due to its satisfactory reliability and low requirement
using the predicted weather data is addressed. Lastly, the enhance-
of training data and computation load. Braun and Chaturvedi
ment based on the error of previous hours is illustrated in Section
[11] proposed a thermal network building model for transient load
2.4.
prediction using the actual measurements of multiple types of
weather data. The developed model and training method were
tested for different buildings and locations using both simulation 2.1. Selection of a reference day
data and site data. It was found that 2 weeks of history data were
sufficient to train the model for cooling or heating prediction. Sim- The selection is based on the similarities in occupancy schedule.
ilarly, Wang and Xu [12] developed another thermal network Additionally, the length of non-occupancy period is also taken into
building model which simplified the building thermal load calcula- consideration. Occupancy schedule refers to varying occupant
tion in terms of heat transfer of the building envelope and the numbers in time series. The actual occupancy schedule is compli-
internal mass. Two different algorithms were used to identify the cated and hard to accurately predict in a high-rise commercial
parameters of the building envelop and its internal mass. The building. The non-occupancy period here refers to the duration be-
parameters of building envelope were determined using frequency tween the end of previous occupancy period and the start of the
characteristic analysis while the parameters of internal mass were following one. It has great impacts on the initial thermal status
identified with generic algorithm (GA). Zhou et al. [13] introduced of building and system. A longer non-occupancy period leads to a
the hourly predictions of weather data (i.e. temperature, RH, solar higher initial temperature of the building and system in the morn-
radiation.) into the developed gray-box model for next day build-
ing load prediction. For online application of gray box mode in
building cooling load prediction, improvements can be made in
three aspects. Firstly, load prediction accuracy can be enhanced
through reducing involvements of the factors with minor impacts.
Each type of weather data has different degrees of impacts on load
prediction. With multiple/all of them involved, prediction errors of
the weather data with minor impacts will compromise the final
building load prediction accuracy. Meanwhile, reduction of weath-
er data prediction results in model complexity reduction. Secondly,
load prediction accuracy can be improved by well considering
internal load from occupants which usually accounts for a large
part or even major part of overall load [14]. The gray-box models,
which fail to take internal load into consideration or merely
approximate the complicated and varying occupancy to be one
simple curve, generate unsatisfactory results when they are ap-
plied in practice. Thirdly, the previous errors of load prediction
can be used to further enhance the accuracy of building load pre- Fig. 1. Framework of the developed load prediction method.
22 Y. Sun et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 68 (2013) 20–27
ing and therefore more chillers should be switched on to provide
more cooling in the morning start control while a shorter one oper-
ates in the exactly opposite way. For instance, Monday usually re-
quires a much larger cooling load in the morning since the
temperature drift to a higher level after 2 day’s non-occupancy
period, i.e. weekend, compared with other weekdays. Although
there are several days which have similar occupancy schedule
and non-occupancy period as the targeted day, the nearest one is
selected for simplification. For different days in a week, the ways
to select reference days are different. For those days (i.e. Wednes-
day, Thursday and Friday) that have similar occupancies as their
previous days, the previous day is selected as their reference days.
For the other days, the previous day cannot be directly used as
their reference days due to the large differences either in occu-
pancy schedule or in non-occupancy periods. For instance, Tuesday
has a much shorter non-occupancy period than its previous day
does, i.e. Monday. Hence, the last Tuesday is selected as its refer-
ence day. Similarly, the day after a public holiday cannot choose
its previous day as its reference day. A simplified reference day
selection approach based on the similarities in occupancy schedule
and non-occupancy period is developed and presented in Table 1.
2.2. Correlation strength identification algorithm
The weather data (i.e. temperature, RH, solar radiation and
cloudiness) are correlated to actual building cooling load in differ-
ent strengths [15]. The accuracy of load prediction may be compro-
mised with involvement of the weather data with weak correlation
to load. One may reason is that the prediction errors of these
weather data propagate in the final load prediction result. With re-
gard to the correlation strength identifications, the correlation
coefficient in statistics is used. The correlation coefficient, i.e. a cor-
relation strength indicator, is as shown in Eq. (1). Its value stays in
the range [1, 1]. A larger absolute value of the coefficient indicates
a stronger linear correlation. The negative and positive values rep-
resent the negative and positive correlations respectively. In the
load prediction method, the most correlated weather data with
the maximum absolute value of the coefficient is selected and its
hourly prediction result is used to calibrate the initial load predic-
tion result based on the reference day. It should be noted that the
most correlated weather data for different buildings in different re-
gions may be different since buildings have different structures,
orientations, and locations.
Cði; jÞ
Rði; jÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Cði; iÞCðj; jÞ
C ¼ Cov ðXÞ
where R is the correlation coefficient; Cov is the covariance matrix; i
and j represent the ith and jth elements of the vector; two columns
in matrix X represents the load measurement and one type of
weather data, e.g. temperature.
Table 1
Reference day selection approach.
Day Reference day
Monday/day after public holiday Last Monday
Tuesday Last Tuesday
Wednesday–Friday Previous day
Saturday Last Saturday
Sunday/public holiday Last Sunday
2.3. Calibration of the initially predicted load using predicted
weather data
The algorithm developed by Zhou et al. [13] is employed for the
hourly prediction of the most correlated weather data identified in
Section 2.2. In this algorithm, a gray box model was developed for
the hourly weather data prediction based on the recorded history
data. Meantime, the weather forecast data was used to improve
the accuracy of the prediction results. The details are illustrated
in Appendix. With the hourly weather data prediction results
known, the initially predicted loads are calibrated as the following
equation:
!
xipre  xiref
CLipre ¼ CLiref  1þa ð3Þ
xiref
where CL and x are cooling load and the most correlated weather
data respectively; subscript pre represents the initial load predic-
tion result; subscript ref is the reference day; and i represents ith
hour; coefficient a is determined by the least square regression
algorithm using history data and it is updated from period to period.
2.4. Load prediction enhancement using the previous errors
For an online load prediction, the errors between the prediction
results and the actual measurements can be used to enhance the
accuracy of next hour load prediction. On one hand, the use of such
error helps eliminate the inherent model error. On the other hand,
the use of such error help the load prediction method quickly adapt
to the unpredictable load variations, e.g. sudden occupant increase.
The enhancement is to add the average error of the past 2 h to the
calibrated load prediction, as shown in Eqs. (4) and (5). It should be
noted when load prediction is made at 24th hour (i.e. k = 0), the er-
ror of 23rd hour in previous day (i.e. DCL23) will be used.

n ¼ k  1 if k ¼ 1; 2; :::; 23
CLkfinal ¼ CLkpre þ DCLn ð4Þ
n ¼ 23 if k ¼ 0
(
0:5  ðCL23 23 0 0
act  CLpre þ CLact  CLpre Þ ðn ¼ 0Þ
DCLn ¼ ð5Þ
0:5  ðCLn1 n1 n n
act  CLpre þ CLact  CLpre Þ ðothersÞ
where subscript act represents actual load measurement; super-
script k is kth hour in a day; subscript n is previous hour of kth hour.
Unlike the above two prediction results (i.e. the initial load pre-
diction result and the calibrated load prediction result) which are
made for a whole day at one time instant (e.g. in the midnight),
the prediction enhancement (i.e. CLkfinal ) is only implemented for
ð1Þ
next hour at each hour sharp. In other words, the final prediction
results are the same as the calibrated ones until the errors of their
past 2 h are available. Although this enhancement is only made for
ð2Þ next hour load prediction, the improved prediction accuracy is
greatly valuable to guide the morning start control and peak de-
mand limiting control in particular when the time of use (TOU)
electricity price is used. Moreover, the accuracy improvement of
short term load prediction is critically important in the future
smart grid when the real time pricing structure is in use.
3. Building and system description
International Commerce Center (ICC) is a super high-rising
building with about 440,000 m2 gross floor area including a base-
ment of four floors, a block building of 6 floors and a tower building
of 112 floors. The basement, about 24,000 m2, is mainly used for
car parking. The block building, i.e. from the ground floor to 5th
floor, mainly serves as commercial center including restaurants,
shopping markets and exhibition halls. The area of the block build-
 Y. Sun et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 68 (2013) 20–27 23

ing is about 67,000 m2. The 6th and 7th floors in the tower building associated with one constant condenser water pump and one con-
are used as mechanical floor (M1) to accommodate chillers, cooling stant primary chilled water pump. The heat dissipated from the
towers, pumps, etc. The 8th floor is a refugee floor and the floors chiller condensers is rejected by eleven cooling towers with a de-
from the 9th to 98th are used for commercial office. Each floor is sign overall capacity of 51,709 kW. In the secondary chilled water
with a length of 66 m and a width of 65 m. Among the commercial system, only Zone 2 (indicated as B in Fig. 2) is supplied with the
office floors, the 41st and 77th floors are used as other two refugee secondary chilled water directly; while the heat exchangers are
floors. The 42nd (M2), 78th (M3) and 99th (M4) floors are used as used in the other three zones to transport the cooling from the
other three mechanical floors to accommodate mechanical equip- lower floors to the higher floors.
ment such as heat exchangers, pumps, PAU and fans. A six-star ho-
tel is located on the top of building, i.e. 100–118th floors.
ICC building is divided into four different zones considering the 4. Case studies and validation
water pressure and human evacuation in case of fire. The zones are
served by a water-cooled chiller system located on the M1 floor. The validations of the developed method were conducted using
The floors below the 6th floor are Zone 1. Zone 2 includes the floors the site data of ICC. The selected data was from mid-June to early
from the 7th floor to 41st floor. Zone 3 is from the 43rd to 77th August in 2011. Three steps were taken to evaluate the perfor-
floor and Zone 4 is from the 79th to 98th floor. To avoid the high mance of the method. The actual load measurements were com-
static water pressure, heat exchangers are used to deliver cooling pared with the load prediction results from each step. In the case
from the lower zone to the upper zone. The heat exchanges are in- studies, the root-mean-square error (RMSE) was employed to cal-
stalled on the mechanical floors of M2 an M3. culate the error between the prediction results and the actual
The schematics of the central chilling system used for these measurement.
zones are shown in Fig. 2. A typical constant primary-variable sec-
ondary chilled water system is used in this building. In the chiller 4.1. Initially predicted load based on a reference day
plant, six identical centrifugal chillers have been equipped to sup-
ply cooling. The rated capacity of them is 7230 kW with 10,000 V The initial load prediction results of four continuous weeks
high operating voltage. The nominal power consumption of each were generated based on their reference days’ load profiles. For
chiller is 1346 kW under its full load condition. Each chiller is clear presentation, only 2-week prediction results are presented

A Secondary water circuit for Zone 1

C FROM OFFICE FLOORS (79-98)

TO OFFICE FLOORSS (79-98)

A B Secondary water circuit for Zone 2

FROM PODIUM & BASEMENT
TO PODIUM & BASEMENT
(S-B)
C Secondary water circuit for Zone
3 and Zone 4
FROM OFFICE FLOORS (43-77)
D Primary water circuit

E Chiller circuit HX-1

HX-1 HX-2
HX-2 HX-3
HX-3 TO OFFICE FLOORS (43-77)
(S-B)

F Cooling water circuit

(S-B)
(S-B)

G Cooling tower circuit

B FROM OFFICCE FLOORS(7-41)

HX 1
HX HX 1
HX
TO OFFICE FLOORS(7-41)

HX 1 HX 2 HX 3 HX 4 HX 5 HX 6 HX 7
(S-B)
(S-B)

(S-B)

PCHWP-06-01 PCHWP-06-02 PCHWP-06-03 PCHWP-06-04 PCHWP-06-05 PCHWP-06-06

E EVAPORAROR EVAPORATOR EVAPORATOR EVAPORATOR EVAPORATOR EVAPORATOR

WCC-06a-01 WCC-06a-02 WCC-06a-03 WCC-06a-04 WCC-06a-05 WCC-06a-06
(2040 Ton) (2040 Ton) (2040 Ton) (2040 Ton) (2040 Ton) (2040 Ton)
CONDENSER CONDENSER CONDENSER CONDENSER CONDENSER CONDENSER

F CDWP-06-01 CDWP-06-02 CDWP-06-03 CDWP-06-04 CDWP-06-05 CDWP-06-06

G CT-06a-01 CT-06a-02 CT-06a-03 CT-06a-04 CT-06a-05 CT-06a-06 CTA-06a-01 CTA-06a-02 CTA-06a-03 CTA-06a-04 CTA-06a-05

COOLING COOLING COOLING COOLING COOLING COOLING COOLING COOLING COOLING COOLING COOLING
TOWER 1 TOWER 2 TOWER 3 TOWER 4 TOWER 5 TOWER 6 TOWER 7 TOWER 8 TOWER 9 TOWER 10 TOWER 11

Fig. 2. Schematics of the central chilled water system.

24 Y. Sun et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 68 (2013) 20–27
in Fig. 3. However, the associated R-square of all 4 weeks predic-
tions is as shown in Fig. 4.
In Fig. 3, the actual load measurements, i.e. diamond curve, dem-
onstrated the greatly different load profiles between weekdays and
weekends/public holiday. For instance, the load profiles of Saturday
(i.e. diamond curve from 120 h to 144 h) showed the morning load
was much larger than the afternoon one. The reason was people in
many companies still work a half day on Saturday in Hong Kong. In
contrast, Sunday was a complete off day and its average load was
much smaller if compared with other days. It should be mentioned
that the public holiday had a much smaller average load, e.g. the
Friday (i.e. 97–120 h) in the bottom part of Fig. 3. The R-square va-
lue 0.89 and the RMSE 2144 kW of the initial load prediction results
indicated an only acceptable prediction accuracy using the refer-
ence day. It also can be observed that the prediction results had sig-
nificant deviations from the actual measurements due to the
external weather difference in certain particular hour, e.g. 25–
48 h in the bottom part of the figure. It was found the maximum
temperature difference between it and its reference day was up
to 4.5 °C, i.e. 29 °C and 33.5 °C. Such great temperature difference
resulted in a considerable amount of external load difference. It
demonstrated that the weather data difference needed to be con-
sidered for improving the accuracy of the prediction results.
4.2. Calibration of initially predicted load using predicted weather data
To identify the correlation strengths between the actual build-
ing load measurements and different types of weather data, one
year historical weather data (i.e. from August 2010 to August
2011) including temperature, RH, solar radiation and cloudiness
were purchased from the Hong Kong Observatory. Fig. 5 shows
1 week load measurements and the associated historical weather
data.
The computed correlation coefficients based on 6 months’ load
measurements and the associated weather data are presented in
Table 2. According to the absolute values of the computed coeffi-
cients, temperature was the most correlated weather data to the
actual load measurements. Its correlation coefficient value was
about 0.6 and hourly predicted temperature was therefore chosen
to calibrate the initial load prediction result.
The predicted hourly temperature of next day was used to cal-
ibrate the initial load prediction results, as shown in Eq. (3). The
4
2.5
x 10
2
Load (kW)
1.5
1
0.5
0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Time (hour)
x 10
4 tion results after the enhancement (i.e. Eq. (4)) was employed. The
2.5
2 Load prediction
Load (kW)
1.5
1
0.5
0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Time (hour)
Fig. 3. Two week comparisons between load actual measurements and the initial
load prediction results.
x 10
4
3
2.5
R-square=0.8894
Load prediction (kW)
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
4
Load mesurement (kW) x 10
Fig. 4. All 4 week comparisons between load actual measurements and initial load
prediction results.
coefficient a in that equation was identified as 0.81 using the least
square regression algorithm. Figs. 6 and 7 show the calibrated load
prediction results. Compared with the initial load prediction re-
sults in Figs. 3 and 4, the accuracy had been improved, i.e. R-square
value improved from 0.89 to 0.93. Meanwhile, the error between
the calibrated prediction and the actual measurement was reduced
by 21%, i.e. RMSD value was improved from 2144 kW to 1698 kW.
It should be noted the accuracy of weather data prediction was
critically important for the load prediction. A poor quality weather
data prediction brought no benefits in improving the load predic-
tion accuracy or even deteriorated the accuracy of load prediction.
The calibrations of the initial load prediction results using other
weather data had also been conducted. Table 3 shows the R-square
and RMSD values when the prediction results of other weather
data were used. It can be observed solar radiation prediction re-
sults can slightly improve the accuracy and little improvement
can be achieved if the prediction results of RH were used. In con-
trast, the cloud amounts actually deteriorated the performance of
load prediction. The main reason was the correlation strength be-
tween the cloud amounts and the cooling load measurements was
weak, i.e. 0.0759. Hence, the type of weather should be selected
properly for the load prediction calibration. Otherwise, no
improvements or even deteriorations could be obtained. It should
Actual measurement
Load prediction
be mentioned the actual cloud amounts were used to calibrate
the initial load prediction since the weather prediction algorithm
in the appendix did not include its prediction.
4.3. Load prediction enhancement using previous errors
120 140 160 In practice, the errors of the past 2 h are easily available and
they are helpful to enhance the accuracy of next hour load predic-
tion, as shown in Eq. (5). Figs. 8 and 9 show the final load predic-
Actual measurement overall accuracy of the load prediction results was improved by R-
square value rising from 0.93 to 0.96. Meanwhile, the value of
RMSD was reduced from 1698 to 1058 kW, i.e. reduction up to
38%. Such great accuracy improvement is greatly valuable for the
controls (e.g. morning start control and the peak demand limiting
control) and the developments of future smart grid.
120 140 160
4.4. Application issues
The load prediction result is essential to determine the proper
operating number of chillers and pre-cooling duration in the
 Y. Sun et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 68 (2013) 20–27 25

4
4 x 10
x 10 2.5
2.5

Load (kW)
2
2
Load (kW)

1.5 1.5

1 1

0.5 0.5
0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Time (h) Time (h)

100
34
32 90
Temp (C)

RH (%)
30
80
28
70
26
24 60
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Time (h) Time (h)
Load vs Temperature Load vs RH

4 4
x 10 x 10
2.5 2.5
2 2

Load (kW)
Load (kW)

1.5 1.5
1 1

0.5 0.5

0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

Time (h) Time (h)

Solar radiation (MJ/m2-h)

Cloud amount (Okta)

4 8
7
3
6
2
5
1 4

0 3
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

Time (h) Time (h)

Load vs Solar radiation Load vs Cloud amount

Fig. 5. Load measurements and the weather data in a week.

Table 2
Correlation coefficients between different types of
weather data and actual load measurement.
4
x 10
Items Correlation coefficient 3
Actual measurement
Load prediction
Temperature 0.5912
Load (kW)

RH 0.3660 2
Radiation 0.4397
Cloudiness 0.0759
1

morning start control. It should be noted that in the morning start 0

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
control, only the prediction results from the second step, i.e. load
Time (hour)
prediction calibrated by the weather data, is available for use if
the pre-cooling is longer than 1 h. The load prediction result is also x 10
4
2.5
useful to guide the charging and discharging operations in load Actual measurement
Load prediction
shifting/peak demand limiting control. 2
Load (kW)

In order to make the developed method a convenient tool for 1.5

practical application, it has been compiled into DLL (Dynamic-link
1
library). The DLL is installed and running in an open Intelligent
0.5
Building Management System integration and management plat-
form located in the super high rise building. The predicted load 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
is used by a few control strategies in that building. It should be
Time (hour)
mentioned that the associated parameters used in the method
should be periodically updated for eliminating the approximation Fig. 6. Two week comparisons between load actual measurements and the
error using least square regression method. calibrated prediction results.
26 Y. Sun et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 68 (2013) 20–27

4 4
x 10 x 10
3 3

2.5 2.5
R-square=0.9295 R-square=0.9656
Load prediction (kW)

Load prediction (kW)

2 2

1.5 1.5

1 1

0.5 0.5

0 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
4 4
Load measurement (kW) x 10 Load measurement (kW) x 10

Fig. 7. All 4 week comparisons between load actual measurements and the Fig. 9. All 4 week comparisons between load actual measurements and the
calibrated prediction results. enhanced load prediction results.

Table 3
Load calibration results with different types of weather data used. (1) The accuracy of the initial load prediction results was only
Weather type R-square RMSD (kW) acceptable with R-square value 0.89 and RMSE 2144 kW.
Temperature 0.93 1698
(2) The accuracy of the calibrated load prediction was improved
RH 0.89 2108 using the hourly prediction results of the most correlated
Radiation 0.90 1946 weather data. The R-square value was improved from 0.89
Cloudiness 0.85 2604 to 0.93. The RMSD value was reduced from 2144 to
1698 kW, i.e. reduction about 21%.
(3) The prediction accuracy of next hour was further enhanced
4 by the existing errors of the past 2 h. The R-square value
x 10
3 was improved from 0.93 to 0.96. The RMSD value was
Actual measurement
Load prediction reduced from 1698 to 1058 kW, i.e. reduction about 38%.
Load (kW)

2
The load prediction results can be used to determine the proper
1 operating number of chillers and pre-cooling duration in the morn-
ing start control. They can also be used to guide the charging and
0 discharging rates in the load shifting/peak demand limiting
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 controls.
Time (h)

4
Acknowledgements
x 10
2.5
Actual measurement
2
The research work presented in this paper is supported by a
Load prediction
Grant (5331/09E) of the Research Grants Council (RGC) of the Hong
Load (kW)

1.5
Kong SAR. The authors would also like to acknowledge the support
1 from the Sun Hung Kai Real Properties Limited.
0.5

0
0 20 40 60
Time (h)
Fig. 8. Two week comparisons between load actual measurements and the
enhanced load prediction results.
5. Conclusions
A simplified online load prediction method was developed in
this paper. In the method, the initial load prediction results of next
24 h based on the chosen reference day was calibrated by the
hourly prediction result of the most correlated weather data. The
accuracy of the final load prediction was enhanced using the error
of the previous 2 h. The case study results using the site data
demonstrated:
Appendix A. Hourly weather data prediction module
80 100 120 140 160
The weather prediction module outputs the hourly predicted
solar radiation Iglobal,k, outdoor air temperature Tamb,k and relative
humidity RHamb,k predictions, where k indicates kth hour. Note that
k can be any value from 1, . . . , 24.
The solar radiation hourly prediction Iglobal,k is calculated by
(A1), where b1, b2 and b3 are the coefficients, which can be ob-
tained using the recursive least square algorithm; Tmax and Tmin
are the daily maximum and minimum temperatures respectively
which are usually available in the weather forecast from a local
observatory; and Tamb,k is the predicted ambient temperature. I0
is daily extraterrestrial solar radiation constant for a particular
region shown as (A2), in which D is the day index number in a
year; Iconst is a solar constant (1370 W m2); and Cm is the average
cloud coverage of the coming day based on the cloud amount
forecasted.
 Y. Sun et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 68 (2013) 20–27 27

sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi! 
T amb;k  T min Cm xav g þ dh ½xk  xav g ; When xk P xav g
Iglabal;k ¼ I 0  b1 þ b2 þ b3 1  ðA1Þ ^xk ¼ ðA7Þ
T max  T min 8 xav g  dl ½xav g  xk ; When xk < xav g

   xmin þ xmax
D xav g ¼ ðA8Þ
I0 ¼ Iconst  1 þ 0:033  cos 2p  ðA2Þ 2
365
xmax  xav g xav g  xmin
The outdoor air temperature (or relative humidity) at the kth dh ¼ ; dl ¼ ðA9Þ
xmax  xav g xav g  xmin
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on the measured temperature (humidity) at the same hour in the
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