Applied Machine Learning in District Heating System

Sammanfattning: In an increasingly applied domain of pervasive computing, sensing devices are being deployed progressively for data acquisition from various systems through the use of technologies such as wireless sensor networks. Data obtained from such systems are used analytically to advance or improve system performance or efficiency. The possibility to acquire an enormous amount of data from any target system has made machine learning a useful approach for several large-scale analytical solutions. Machine learning has proved viable in the area of the energy sector, where the global demand for energy and the increasingly accepted need for green energy is gradually challenging energy supplies and the efficiency in its consumption.This research, carried out within the area of pervasive computing, aims to explore the application of machine learning and its effectiveness in the energy sector with dependency on sensing devices. The target application area readily falls under a multi-domain energy grid which provides a system across two energy utility grids as a combined heat and power system. The multi-domain aspect of the target system links to a district heating system network and electrical power from a combined heat and power plant. This thesis, however, focuses on the district heating system as the application area of interest while contributing towards a future goal of a multi-domain energy grid, where improved efficiency level, reduction of overall carbon dioxide footprint and enhanced interaction and synergy between the electricity and thermal grid are vital goals. This thesis explores research issues relating to the effectiveness of machine learning in forecasting heat demands at district heating substations, and the key factors affecting domestic heat load patterns in buildings.The key contribution of this thesis is the application of machine learning techniques in forecasting heat energy consumption in buildings, and our research outcome shows that supervised machine learning methods are suitable for domestic thermal load forecast. Among the examined machine learning methods which include multiple linear regression, support vector machine,  feed forward neural network, and regression tree, the support vector machine performed best with a normalized root mean square error of 0.07 for a 24-hour forecast horizon. In addition, weather and time information are observed to be the most influencing factors when forecasting heat load at heating network substations. Investigation on the effect of using substation's operational attributes, such as the supply and return temperatures, as additional input parameters when forecasting heat load shows that the use of substation's internal operational attributes has less impact.