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MAISY RECS Hourly Loads & Emissions Databases
 

Question 2. How are MAISY RECS Databases Different From Department of Energy RECS Databases?

Short Answer: MAISY RECS Residential Hourly Load Databases extend basic RECS residential databases to include the following data items and features:
  • 8760 whole building hourly loads for each household
  • 8760 end-use hourly loads for 7 end-uses: space heat, AC, water heating, refrigerator/freezers, appliances (clothes dryer + oven+ dishwasher + clothes washer + microwave), lighting and all other end uses.
  • CO2e emissions for electricity, natural gas, fuel oil and propane and the total for each household
  • Filtered end-use energy use estimates to adjust for outliers (about 2% of records include an adjusted end use kwh to correct for out-of-bounds estimates based on statistical outlier analysis)
  • Space heating, air conditioning and energy cost adjustments to reflect typical weather data (rather than 2020 data)
  • Selection of 92 most relevant RECS variables (out of 778 possible)
  • Conversion of numeric values to meaningful mnemonics (e.g., fuel type =5 is presented as elec (electricity) in the spreadsheet
  • Original RECS IDs to enable integration of additional EIA RECS variables
Longer Answer: MAISY RECS extensions have added whole building and end-use hourly loads and emissions to each individual record to provide a robust national data set of residential energy use data to support utility, state, manufacturers, and other energy-related organization analysis and planning.

MAISY RECS Residential Hourly Load Databases apply a proprietary MAISY machine learning process that matches RECS household characteristics to household characteristics in MAISY Metered Hourly Loads Databases consisting of 230,000 end-use daily load profiles for a dozen non-weather-sensitive end uses. EPLUS engineering heat load analysis results are used to calculate heating and air conditioning hourly loads based on typical meteorological data calibrated to actual household energy use/weather conditions using more than 900 weather stations in the US. See more detail on the MAISY AI machine-learning process that applies actual metered data to each RECS record and and additional detail on the use of engineering EPLUS model analysis to develop weather-sensitive loads.

Whole building and end-use hourly load detail is provided for each RECS record. End use hourly load categories include: space heat, AC, water heating, refrigerator/freezers, appliances (clothes dryer + oven+ dishwasher + clothes washer + microwave), lighting +TV and all other end uses.

Extensive error filtering was applied to the original RECS end-use energy use estimates to identify and correct erroneous hourly load estimates. Approximately 2% of record end-use estimates were identified as being “out of bounds” based on standard error-based analysis and judgmental engineering evaluations.

Since most energy use and hourly loads analysis is based on “normal” weather conditions, 2020 space heating, air conditioning and ventilation energy use provided in RECS is adjusted to reflect typical meteorological weather data.

The original EIA RECS databases include 778 data items, most of which are not used in typical residential energy analysis. The MAISY RECS Databases include 92 of the most relevant variables. MAISY RECS databases include RECS IDs that can be used to append any of the other 686 variables to MAISY RECS database records.

Finally, MAISY RECS Databases have converted numeric data item values to meaningful mnemonics (e.g., fuel type =5 is presented as elec (electricity) in the spreadsheet.

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