Opportunities and Challenges of Applying Large Language Models in Building Energy Efficiency and Decarbonization Studies: An Exploratory Overview
It addresses the potential for AI to improve energy efficiency in buildings, but is incremental as it provides an overview rather than new results.
This paper explores the application of Large Language Models (LLMs) in building energy efficiency and decarbonization studies, examining their capabilities in areas like intelligent control and data infrastructure, while identifying challenges such as computational costs and data privacy.
In recent years, the rapid advancement and impressive capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) have been evident across various domains. This paper explores the application, implications, and potential of LLMs in building energy efficiency and decarbonization studies. The wide-ranging capabilities of LLMs are examined in the context of the building energy field, including intelligent control systems, code generation, data infrastructure, knowledge extraction, and education. Despite the promising potential of LLMs, challenges including complex and expensive computation, data privacy, security and copyright, complexity in fine-tuned LLMs, and self-consistency are discussed. The paper concludes with a call for future research focused on the enhancement of LLMs for domain-specific tasks, multi-modal LLMs, and collaborative research between AI and energy experts.