Hourly cooling load prediction by a combined forecasting model based on Analytic Hierarchy Process

Predicting the next-24-hour load in a building is essential for the optimal control of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems that use thermal/cool storage technology and also for cost and energy reduction of the non-storage systems. To fully integrate the advantages of several models and improve the accuracy of forecasting load, the application of the combined forecasting method to hourly load forecasting is presented in this paper. The method of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is employed to deduce the weights of each model. A case study shows that the combined forecasting model based on AHP may be better than the individual ones in predicting the building's hourly load for the future hours. (C) 2004 Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.