A novel energy consumption prediction method for chillers based on an improved support vector machine.

The energy consumption prediction of the chiller is an important means to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. Therefore, a novel energy consumption prediction model for chillers based on an improved support vector machine (ICA-DE-SVM) is proposed. The imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) is used to optimize the penalty coefficient and kernel function width of SVM, greatly improving the generalization ability and prediction accuracy of the SVM model. The assimilation process is very important in ICA. Colonies of empires move randomly toward imperialists during the assimilation process in ICA, which decreases population diversity and can lead to premature convergence. Therefore, to create more new locations for colonies and increase population diversity, the idea of differential mutation proposed by differential evolution (DE) was applied to ICA. The established model was experimentally verified in an actual multi-chiller system in a building, and the results showed that the ICA-DE-SVM model could obtain good prediction results. Finally, the proposed model was compared with SVM model, PSO-SVM model, GA-SVM model, WOA-SVM model, and ICA-SVM model. With an MAPE of 0.6%, an MSE of 2.3, and an R2 of 0.9998, the findings demonstrate that the ICA-DE-SVM model has a greater prediction accuracy than the other models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]