Household electrical consumptions modeling and management through neural networks and fuzzy logic approaches

In recent years the European Union and, moreover, Italy has seen a rapid growth in the photovoltaic (PV) sector, following the introduction of the feed in tariff schemes. In this scenario, the design of a new PV plant ensuring savings on electricity bills is strongly related to household electricity consumption patterns. This chapter presents a high-resolution model of domestic electricity use, based on Fuzzy Logic Inference System. The model is built with a "bottom-up" approach and the basic block is the single appliance. Using as inputs patterns of active occupancy and typical domestic habits, the fuzzy model give as output the likelihood to start each appliance within the next minute. In order to validate the model, electricity demand was recorded over the period of one year within 12 dwellings in the central east coast of Italy. A thorough quantitative comparison is made between the synthetic and measured data sets, showing them to have similar statistical characteristics. The focus of the second part of this work is to develop a neural networks based energy management algorithm coupled with the fuzzy model to correctly size a residential photovoltaic plant evaluating the economic benefits of energy management actions in a case study. A cost benefits analysis is presented to quantify its effectiveness in the new Italian scenario and the evaluation of energy management actions. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.