A Hybrid Deep Learning Framework with CEEMDAN, Multi-Scale CNN, and Multi-Head Attention for Building Load Forecasting

Accurate building load forecasting is essential for smart grid and energy management, yet nonlinearity, non-stationarity, and multi-scale characteristics of load data challenge traditional methods. To address these issues, we propose a hybrid deep learning framework, CEEMDAN-MultiScale-CNN-BiLSTM-MultiAttention. First, Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise (CEEMDAN) decomposes the load sequence into intrinsic mode functions (IMFs), mitigating mode mixing and complexity. Then, a MultiScale Convolutional Neural Network extracts multi-scale local features from each IMF. A Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory network captures bidirectional temporal dependencies, and a Multi-Attention mechanism dynamically emphasizes critical time steps and feature channels, enhancing interpretability and prediction. The framework is validated on the Building Data Genome Project 2 dataset, achieving a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 2.6464% and a coefficient of determination R2 of 0.8999, outperforming mainstream methods across multiple metrics. The main contributions are: (1) a hybrid framework integrating CEEMDAN, multi-scale feature extraction, and attention mechanisms to handle nonlinearity and non-stationarity; (2) a MultiScale-CNN to capture multi-scale temporal features and adapt to multi-frequency components; (3) a Multi-Attention mechanism to dynamically focus on key time steps and channels, improving accuracy and robustness. This work provides an effective solution for building load forecasting in complex energy systems.