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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Energy Res.

Sec. Process and Energy Systems Engineering

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2025.1566664

Intelligent forecasting of electricity consumption for hospital outpatient buildings by FOA-SVR hybrid strategy

Provisionally accepted
Chao  LiuChao Liu1Gao  WuGao Wu1Linyu  ZhangLinyu Zhang2Qinwen  YaoQinwen Yao1Yaru  YangYaru Yang3Qingtai  XiaoQingtai Xiao1*
  • 1Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, China
  • 2Chongqing Technology and Business University, Chongqing, China
  • 3Jiaxing University, Jiaxing, Zhejiang, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

To address the dilemma that the small sample size of hospital energy consumption data makes it difficult to predict short-term electricity consumption, a combination of the Firefly Optimization Algorithm (FOA) and the Support Vector Regression (SVR) algorithm, i.e., FOA-SVR, was proposed in this work. By combining standardized sample data with the FOA to optimize the hyperparameters of the SVR model, the proposed approach enhances the model's ability to capture the variation characteristics of hospital electricity consumption. As a result, stable predictions were achieved using a small amount of data, providing valuable support for optimizing the energy use structure. The results show that the hybrid strategy achieves an optimal balance between prediction accuracy and computational efficiency when the number of fireflies was 30.The prediction accuracy indicator (Coefficient of Determination, R 2 ) was 0.855, respectively. Under these conditions, the hybrid strategy has the dual advantage of running faster than the existing Sparrow search algorithm, and the traditional seagull optimization algorithm, with run times reduced by 21.192 s and 14.612 s, respectively.When the length of electricity consumption data was greater than or equal to 36, R 2 of the FOA-SVR hybrid strategy was higher than 0.849. The FOA-SVR hybrid strategy realizes a kind of efficient prediction of power consumption in medical office buildings with a small sample data volume, which provides theoretical and data support for the reasonable optimization of hospital energy use structure and has practical significance for the intelligence of hospital energy management.

Keywords: Firefly optimization algorithm, Support vector regression, Small sample size, electricity consumption projections, hospital outpatient building

Received: 23 Feb 2025; Accepted: 26 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Wu, Zhang, Yao, Yang and Xiao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Qingtai Xiao, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, China

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