Artificial Intelligence based Anomaly Detection of Energy Consumption in Buildings: A Review, Current Trends and New Perspectives

Enormous amounts of data are being produced everyday by sub-meters and smart sensors installed in residential buildings. If leveraged properly, that data could assist end-users, energy producers and utility companies in detecting anomalous power consumption and understanding the causes of each anomaly. Therefore, anomaly detection could stop a minor problem becoming overwhelming. Moreover, it will aid in better decision-making to reduce wasted energy and promote sustainable and energy efficiency behavior. In this regard, this paper an in-depth review of existing anomaly detection frameworks for building energy consumption based on artificial intelligence. Specifically, an extensive survey is introduced, in which a comprehensive taxonomy is introduced to classify existing algorithms based on different modules and parameters adopted in their implementation, such as machine learning algorithms, feature extraction approaches, anomaly detection levels, computing platforms and application scenarios. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first review article that discusses the anomaly detection in building energy consumption. Moving forward, important findings along with domain-specific problems, difficulties and challenges that remain unresolved are thoroughly discussed, including the absence of: (i) precise definitions of anomalous power consumption, (ii) annotated datasets, (iii) unified metrics to assess the performance of existing solutions, (iv) platforms for reproducibility, and (v) privacy-preservation. Following, insights about current research trends are discussed to widen the application and effectiveness of anomaly detection technology before deriving a set of future directions attracting significant research and development.