Combining an improved Apriori algorithm and Social Network analysis to identify the unique sequential features of individual household electricity consumption behaviours

The household's electricity consumption behaviour follows a unique sequential pattern and can be identified by analyzing the electricity consumption data with fine granularity in a smart home context. This particular sequence is concretely embodied in a series of electrical activities with temporal association relationships, thus forming a unique household electrical appliance activity-based chain (EAAC). In this study, we propose a method that combines an improved Apriori algorithm and Social Network to construct a household EAACs. First, we improved the Apriori algorithm (Apriori (1,1)) by combining the temporal and transactional sequences and used it to mine the time-series activity associations among different household appliances. After that, we used the Sliding Window concept to splice the time-series associations and obtain the unique EAACs for each household. Next, we visualized the EAACs using the Social Network analysis to reflect the unique sequential features of household electricity consumption behaviours. Finally, the model was validated by analyzing two families' actual household electricity consumption data, and future research directions were given.Highlights The Apriori algorithm was improved by integrating a time factor to mine the temporal association relationships among different household electrical appliancesChaining the activities of household electrical appliances based on the sliding window principleExploring the unique sequential features of household electricity consumption by visualizing the EAACs through social network graph topology