The Energy Prediction Smart-Meter Dataset: Analysis of Previous Competitions and Beyond

This paper presents the real-world smart-meter dataset and offers an analysis of solutions derived from the Energy Prediction Technical Challenges, focusing primarily on two key competitions: the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE-CIS) Technical Challenge on Energy Prediction from Smart Meter data in 2020 (named EP) and its follow-up challenge at the IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE) in 2021 (named as XEP). These competitions focus on accurate energy consumption forecasting and the importance of interpretability in understanding the underlying factors. The challenge aims to predict monthly and yearly estimated consumption for households, addressing the accurate billing problem with limited historical smart meter data. The dataset comprises 3,248 smart meters, with varying data availability ranging from a minimum of one month to a year. This paper delves into the challenges, solutions and analysing issues related to the provided real-world smart meter data, developing accurate predictions at the household level, and introducing evaluation criteria for assessing interpretability. Additionally, this paper discusses aspects beyond the competitions: opportunities for energy disaggregation and pattern detection applications at the household level, significance of communicating energy-driven factors for optimised billing, and emphasising the importance of responsible AI and data privacy considerations. These aspects provide insights into the broader implications and potential advancements in energy consumption prediction. Overall, these competitions provide a dataset for residential energy research and serve as a catalyst for exploring accurate forecasting, enhancing interpretability, and driving progress towards the discussion of various aspects such as energy disaggregation, demand response programs or behavioural interventions.