Energy Consumption Forecasting for Smart Meters

Earth, water, air, food, shelter and energy are essential factors required for human being to survive on the planet. Among this energy plays a key role in our day to day living including giving lighting, cooling and heating of shelter, preparation of food. Due to this interdependency, energy, specifically electricity, production and distribution became a high tech industry. Unlike other industries, the key differentiator of electricity industry is the product itself. It can be produced but cannot be stored for future; production and consumption happen almost in near real-time. This particular peculiarity of the industry is the key driver for Machine Learning and Data Science based innovations in this industry. There is always a gap between the demand and supply in the electricity market across the globe. To fill the gap and improve the service efficiency through providing necessary supply to the market, commercial as well as federal electricity companies employ forecasting techniques to predict the future demand and try to meet the demand and provide curtailment guidelines to optimise the electricity consumption/demand. In this paper the authors examine the application of Machine Learning algorithms, specifically Boosted Decision Tree Regression, to the modelling and forecasting of energy consumption for smart meters. The data used for this exercise is obtained from DECC data website. Along with this data, the methodology has been tested in Smart Meter data obtained from EMA Singapore. This paper focuses on feature engineering for time series forecasting using regression algorithms and deriving a methodology to create personalised electricity plans offers for household users based on usage history.