Deriving U.S. household energy consumption profiles from American time use survey data – a bootstrap approach

This paper presents a novel approach to derive U.S. residential building energy load profiles. This approach uses bootstrap sampling method to extract daily activity pattern of occupants of a household from American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data. The characteristics of ATUS data, the relation between time-use and load-demand, and the robustness of this approach are discussed. Virtual experiments were conducted on Energy Plus platform to study the patterns of annual load demand distribution under different household composition and thermal zoning schemes. Simulations of average 24-hr appliance and lighting load profiles were also conducted. The simulated load profiles and those from utility metering studies have good agreement. This novel approach has versatile applications in residential building energy simulation.