Short-term Load Forecasting at Different Aggregation Levels with Predictability Analysis
This work addresses the problem of forecasting low-aggregation loads for power system operators, but it is incremental as it applies existing methods to new data and analysis.
The paper tackled short-term load forecasting for small-and-medium enterprise and residential loads at different aggregation levels, finding that individual loads are more volatile and challenging to forecast, with data processing improving residential load forecasting as validated by numerical results.
Short-term load forecasting (STLF) is essential for the reliable and economic operation of power systems. Though many STLF methods were proposed over the past decades, most of them focused on loads at high aggregation levels only. Thus, low-aggregation load forecast still requires further research and development. Compared with the substation or city level loads, individual loads are typically more volatile and much more challenging to forecast. To further address this issue, this paper first discusses the characteristics of small-and-medium enterprise (SME) and residential loads at different aggregation levels and quantifies their predictability with approximate entropy. Various STLF techniques, from the conventional linear regression to state-of-the-art deep learning, are implemented for a detailed comparative analysis to verify the forecasting performances as well as the predictability using an Irish smart meter dataset. In addition, the paper also investigates how using data processing improves individual-level residential load forecasting with low predictability. Effectiveness of the discussed method is validated with numerical results.