An Agent Based Approach to Find High Energy Consuming Activities

Inhabitants’ behaviour in buildings has a strong impact on the energy consumption patterns resulting in energy waste. The existing multi agent and centralized energy management approaches are focused on consumption optimization and load predictions without taking into account the inhabitants’ behaviour. We argue that the consumption optimization without waste reduction is difficult. In this article we focus on the energy waste reduction associated with the inhabitants’ behaviour. As an example a physical model for the fridge to predict the energy waste component and an agent based co-simulation methodology to identify high energy consuming activities, are developed. The proposed methodology demonstrates that based on the co-simulation results a library of high energy consuming activities can be built to support energy waste reduction efforts in Smart homes. It shall result in a shift from an energy manager towards an energy wizard to provide agents with the information on their consumption behaviour and alternatives to ensure the energy waste reduction.