HUE: The hourly usage of energy dataset for buildings in British Columbia

Having access to long-term consumption data from multiple houses help research simulate and test systems for microgrid, off-grid communities, and alternative energy production. The HUE dataset contains donated data from residential customers of BCHydro, a provincial power utility. There are currently twenty-two houses contain within the dataset with most houses having three years of consumption history. Data was downloaded from BCHydro's customer web porthole by each customer who then donated the data for research. Weather data from the nearest weather station and one-year of simulated solar data also included.


Data
Consumption history data, simulated solar data, and weather data is stored in simple commaseparated-value (CSV) files. The summary data is stored in a fixed-length format to may it easy to read. There are a total of 27 files in this dataset. Table 1 describes the files within the dataset. Data frequency for all files is hourly (in local Pacific timezone). Data was downloaded from BCHydro's customer web porthole by each customer who then donated the data for research. Weather data was downloaded from the nearest Environment Canada [5] weather station. Simulated solar data was generated by a tool provided by the US Department of Energy [4].

Experimental design, materials, and methods
Data was obtained through donation by BCHydro customers. Each customer logged into BCHydro's customer web porthole and requested an export of historical hourly consumption data. The porthole only allows customers to download a maximum of three years worth of data. Only BCHydro customers were asked to donate to keep the data quality consistent. Customers were solicited through be emailing a pamphlet out to a network of family, friends, and work colleagues. The pamphlet is attached as supplementary material to the paper. Table 2 describes the data columns found in each file of the dataset. Each house has some additional characteristic data that was collected about it (see the All_Residential.txt file) and each characteristic is described there, as well in Table 3. Note that there is no characteristic data for House 7.
Residential House 1 is the same house used in the AMPds dataset [1,2] which has 2-years of perminute data including appliance-level consumption data; and is House 1 in the RAE dataset [3] with approximately 60-days of 1Hz including appliance-level consumption data. Residential House 2 is House 2 in the RAE dataset [3] with approximately one-year of 1Hz including appliance-level consumption data.

Value of the data
Provides long-term consumption data from multiple houses help research simulate and test systems for microgrid and off-grid communities. Provides real-world consumption data for developing and testing optimal energy production for communities using alternative energy or control their own energy production. Provides data that can be used to provide financial analysis for installing battery storage for solar producing communities. Provides data that can be used to provide financial analysis and impact analysis for simulating communities using electric vehicles.

Acknowledgments
No funding from funding agencies was used. Table 3 House characteristics descriptions.

House
The house ID number. FirstReading The first reading date in the house's data file. LastReading The last reading date in the house's data file. At the end of each year, some house files will be updated with new data. Cover The data coverage. The percent of non-missing readings. A value of 1.000 is 100%. HouseType character: multi-level houses build before 1940 bungalow: single-level (w/basement) houses built in the 1940s and 1950s special: two-level houses built between 1965 and 1989 modern: two-/three-level houses build in the 1990s and afterwards duplex: two houses that share a common wall, can be side-by-side or front-back triplex: three houses that share common walls: top unit, front unit, and back unit townhouse: row houses that share one or two common walls apartment: hight-rise or low-rise living units

Transparency document
Transparency document associated with this article can be found in the online version at https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2019.103744.