Transfer Learning on Transformers for Building Energy Consumption Forecasting -- A Comparative Study

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Spencer, Robert, Ranathunga, Surangika, Boulic, Mikael, van Heerden, Andries, Susnjak, Teo
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866915028558413824
author Spencer, Robert
Ranathunga, Surangika
Boulic, Mikael
van Heerden, Andries
Susnjak, Teo
author_facet Spencer, Robert
Ranathunga, Surangika
Boulic, Mikael
van Heerden, Andries
Susnjak, Teo
contents This study investigates the application of Transfer Learning (TL) on Transformer architectures to enhance building energy consumption forecasting. Transformers are a relatively new deep learning architecture, which has served as the foundation for groundbreaking technologies such as ChatGPT. While TL has been studied in the past, prior studies considered either one data-centric TL strategy or used older deep learning models such as Recurrent Neural Networks or Convolutional Neural Networks. Here, we carry out an extensive empirical study on six different data-centric TL strategies and analyse their performance under varying feature spaces. In addition to the vanilla Transformer architecture, we also experiment with Informer and PatchTST, specifically designed for time series forecasting. We use 16 datasets from the Building Data Genome Project 2 to create building energy consumption forecasting models. Experimental results reveal that while TL is generally beneficial, especially when the target domain has no data, careful selection of the exact TL strategy should be made to gain the maximum benefit. This decision largely depends on the feature space properties such as the recorded weather features. We also note that PatchTST outperforms the other two Transformer variants (vanilla Transformer and Informer). Our findings advance the building energy consumption forecasting using advanced approaches like TL and Transformer architectures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_14107
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Transfer Learning on Transformers for Building Energy Consumption Forecasting -- A Comparative Study
Spencer, Robert
Ranathunga, Surangika
Boulic, Mikael
van Heerden, Andries
Susnjak, Teo
Machine Learning
This study investigates the application of Transfer Learning (TL) on Transformer architectures to enhance building energy consumption forecasting. Transformers are a relatively new deep learning architecture, which has served as the foundation for groundbreaking technologies such as ChatGPT. While TL has been studied in the past, prior studies considered either one data-centric TL strategy or used older deep learning models such as Recurrent Neural Networks or Convolutional Neural Networks. Here, we carry out an extensive empirical study on six different data-centric TL strategies and analyse their performance under varying feature spaces. In addition to the vanilla Transformer architecture, we also experiment with Informer and PatchTST, specifically designed for time series forecasting. We use 16 datasets from the Building Data Genome Project 2 to create building energy consumption forecasting models. Experimental results reveal that while TL is generally beneficial, especially when the target domain has no data, careful selection of the exact TL strategy should be made to gain the maximum benefit. This decision largely depends on the feature space properties such as the recorded weather features. We also note that PatchTST outperforms the other two Transformer variants (vanilla Transformer and Informer). Our findings advance the building energy consumption forecasting using advanced approaches like TL and Transformer architectures.
title Transfer Learning on Transformers for Building Energy Consumption Forecasting -- A Comparative Study
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.14107