Forecasting Residential Electricity Use from Satellite Remote Sensing Skin Temperature
MENGLIN S. JIN
ABSTRACT
This study proposes a new approach to forecast the residential energy use for high spatial and temperature resolutions. Land surface skin temperature measured from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) observations, at 1 km and 4 times/day, shows closely relation with the residential energy use for three different states: California, New York, and Arizona, which have peaks during both summers and winters for California and New York, and in summers for Arizona. Nevertheless, different climate and population refine the relation between skin temperature and energy use. Therefore, skin temperature could be used as a new index for residential energy forecast. Since skin temperature from remote sensing has advantages including global coverage and high resolution (for example, 1 km in MODIS and even finer for some other satellite instruments), applying skin temperature in energy need forecast is a new, interdisciplinary approach which may help the utility companies or energy resources managements to rapidly forecast the electricity need at high spatial resolution, a scale that would be appropriate for green building and smart city developments over the globe.
file of the paper
submitted to BAMS in July 2016
-- Last updated May 2016