Creating Personalised Energy Plans. From Groups to Individuals using Fuzzy C Means Clustering
This addresses the need for personalized energy management for UK domestic users, but it is incremental as it extends existing clustering methods.
The paper tackles the problem of domestic electricity users needing to modify usage behavior by applying Fuzzy C Means clustering to household usage profiles, enabling personalized energy plans and feedback on behavior changes toward greener or cost-effective usage.
Changes in the UK electricity market mean that domestic users will be required to modify their usage behaviour in order that supplies can be maintained. Clustering allows usage profiles collected at the household level to be clustered into groups and assigned a stereotypical profile which can be used to target marketing campaigns. Fuzzy C Means clustering extends this by allowing each household to be a member of many groups and hence provides the opportunity to make personalised offers to the household dependent on their degree of membership of each group. In addition, feedback can be provided on how user's changing behaviour is moving them towards more "green" or cost effective stereotypical usage.