In this paper, nonlinear time series modeling techniques are applied to analyze building energy consumption data. The time series were obtained for the benchmark data set Proben 1, and comes from the first energy prediction contest, the Great Building Energy Predictor Shootout I, organized by ASHRAE. The phase space, which describes the evolution of the behavior of a nonlinear system, is reconstructed using the delay embedding theorem suggested by TAKENS. The embedding parameters, e.g. the delay time and the embedding dimension are estimated using the average mutual information (AMI) of the data and the false nearest neighbor (FNN) algorithm, respectively. Nonlinearity was detected, by applying the surrogate data sets method.
Numerically estimated non-integral fractal dimension and a positive Lyapunov exponent are not necessarily sufficient indication of chaos; therefore we apply a more stringent criterion, developed by Gao and Zheng, which is based on the logarithmic displacement of time-dependent exponent curves, and show that these data are chaotic.
Based on this analysis and proof, we then calculate the correlation dimension of the resulting attractor and the largest Lyapunov exponent. The correlation dimension 3.47 and largest Lyapunov exponent 0.047 are estimated. These results indicate that chaotic characteristics obviously exist in the specific energy consumption data set, and thus techniques based on phase space dynamics can be used to analyze and predict buildings energy use.