The National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), one of the DEDALUS scientific partners, has completed a study on grouping residential electricity consumers, based on their historical electricity consumption, to create more targeted demand-response programmes.

This grouping will be used in almost every DEDALUS service at the end of the day, making the services more targeted per group.

Specifically, this paper introduces a machine learning-based framework to optimize demand response programmes. Using data from nearly 5,000 households in London, four clustering algorithms—K-means, K-medoids, Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering, and DBSCAN—were evaluated to identify groups with similar consumption patterns.
The problem was reframed as a probabilistic classification task, leveraging Explainable AI to improve model interpretability. The optimal number of clusters was found to be seven, although two clusters, comprising around 10% of the data, exhibited high internal dissimilarity and were excluded from further consideration. This framework offers a scalable solution for utility companies to enhance the targeting and effectiveness of demand response initiatives.

The paper, in Open Access, is available for download in the Resources section of the DEDALUS project’s website.

(Photo Credits: iStock)

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A new EU-funded project – DEDALUS – aims to develop and demonstrate an optimised demand-response ecosystem for residential buildings. Launched in June 2023, the project has 23 partners from 9 countries and will last for three years.

In the European Union, households represent 27.4% of the final energy consumption. The residential loads often contribute significantly to seasonal and daily peak demand. To support this variation, and to avoid interruption to the power supply, utility companies need to increase their energy generation.

Within this context, flexible consumption can play a pivotal role in the residential sector as it offers enormous energy demand flexibility, mainly thanks to the immense thermal energy storage and power management capabilities of the buildings. However, matching electricity supply and demand at all times is becoming increasingly challenging, which highlights the need for greater flexibility in the electricity system.

Residential demand response can reduce the need for fossil fuel power plants and facilitate the integration of renewable energy into the electricity grid by providing greater stability and management.

DEDALUS integrates cutting-edge ICT technologies with social and behavioral dimensions, as well as with sharing economy and value-stacking governance and business models.

The project is composed of three layers: business, social, and technological.

DEDALUS runs from June 2023 to May 2026 under the coordination of Engineering SpA.

(Photo Credits: Elissaios Sarmas, NTUA)

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