US Patent 10108215 Weather induced facility energy consumption characterization mechanism

A method for characterizing buildings, including retrieving a plurality of baseline energy use data sets for the buildings from a baseline data stores; generating energy use data sets for each of the buildings, each of the energy use data sets comprising energy consumption values along with corresponding time and outside temperature values, where the energy consumption values within each of the sets are shifted by one of a plurality of lag values relative to the corresponding time and outside temperature values, and where each of the plurality of lag values is different from other ones of the plurality of lag values; performing a regression analysis on the each of the plurality of energy use data sets to yield corresponding regression model parameters and a corresponding residual; determining a least valued residual from all residuals yielded by the regression engine, the least valued residual indicating a corresponding energy lag for the each of the buildings; and categorizing the buildings into types according to similar energy lags.