Context Analysis in Energy Resource Management of Residential Buildings

This paper presents a context analysis methodology to improve the management of residential energy resources by making the decision making process adaptive to different contexts. A context analysis model is proposed and described, using a clustering process to group similar situations. Several clustering quality assessment indices, which support the decisions on how many clusters should be created in each run, are also considered, namely: the Calinski Harabasz, Davies Bouldin, Gap Value and Silhouette. Results show that the application of the proposed model allows to identify different contexts by finding patterns of devices' use and also to compare different optimal k criteria. The data used in this case study represents the energy consumption of a generic home during one year (2014) and features the measurements of several devices' consumption as well as of several contextual variables. The proposed method enhances the energy resource management through adaptation to different contexts.