Analysis and prediction of energy consumption in office buildings with variable refrigerant flow systems: A case study

Accurately predicting building air-conditioning energy consumption is particularly important for energy management. However, for small datasets, there is a lack of simple and effective prediction methods applicable to multiple buildings. In order to fully explore the energy consumption mode of Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) air conditioning system and improve the accuracy of the model. This study uses the weather data of an outdoor meteorological data collection system and the air conditioning system and energy consumption data of an office building in Jinan. Initial analysis revealed that occupant behavior and daily variations in outdoor air temperatures significantly impact the energy consumption of air conditioning systems. Then, by applying the random forest algorithm and Pearson correlation analysis, the study identified daily average outdoor air temperature and VRF indoor unit running time as critical features for prediction. Subsequently, three machine learning models-Multiple Linear Regression (MLR), Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN), and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network-were developed and assessed using a 4:1 training-to-testing set ratio. Comparative analysis revealed that all models performed robustly, with the MLR model exhibited superior predictive accuracy (R2 (Coefficient of Determination) = 0.98, MAE (Mean Absolute Error) = 0.005 kWh/ (m2 center dot day), and RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) = 0.007 kWh/(m2 center dot day) for the testing set) and simplicity. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the MLR model in handling small sample sizes was confirmed through cross-validation of data from two additional office buildings, highlighting its suitability for predicting energy consumption of VRF air conditioning systems in office buildings.