A data-driven approach for benchmarking energy efficiency of warehouse buildings

• Main Authors: LEE, Wee Leong, TAN, Kar Way, LIM, Zui Young
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: Energy Efficiency; Sustainability; Data Analytics; Databases and Information Systems; Data Storage Systems; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/3658; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/4660/viewcontent/Warehouse_benchmarking_f.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This study proposes adata-driven approach for benchmarking energy efficiency of warehouse buildings.Our proposed approach provides an alternative to the limitation of existingbenchmarking approaches where a theoretical energy-efficient warehouse was usedas a reference. Our approach starts by defining the questions needed to capturethe characteristics of warehouses relating to energy consumption. Using an existingdata set of warehouse building containing various attributes, we first cluster theminto groups by their characteristics. The warehouses characteristics derivedfrom the cluster assignments along with their past annual energy consumptionare subsequently used to train a decision tree model. The decision tree providesa classification of what factors contribute to different levels of energyconsumption. Finally, we showed how a linear regression method is used to predictthe energy consumption based on relationships between strongly correlatedvariables, such as climate zone, number of working hours, and floor area. Withour proposed data-driven approach, decision makers can analyze and benchmarktheir warehouse building data, adopt best practices from existing solutions andmake better decisions when recommending high-impact energy reduction solutionsfor their warehouses.