Analysis and clustering of natural gas consumption data for thermal energy use forecasting

In this paper, after a brief analysis of the connections between the uses of natural gas and thermal energy use, the natural gas consumption data related to Italian market are analyzed and opportunely clustered in order to compute the typical consumption profile in different days of the week in different seasons and for the different class of users: residential, tertiary and industrial. The analysis of the data shows that natural gas consumption profile is related in an important way to seasonality pattern and mainly to the outside temperature, but there is also an important daily pattern both related to industrial and civil energy consumption that, at a lower degree than the previous one, does affect the consumption profile and have to be taken into account for defining an effective short and mid term thermal energy forecasting method. This information extracted appears to be interesting not only in the perspective of defining a model of energy use based on both physical and statistical elements but also to support energy providers with some information that can be used to tailor bills according to actual energy consumption profiles.