Revisiting Day-ahead Electricity Price: Simple Model Save Millions
This work addresses a practical problem for residential electricity consumers by improving forecasting accuracy with potential cost savings, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing time series modeling with economic priors.
The paper tackles inaccurate day-ahead electricity price forecasting by proposing a simple piecewise linear model that leverages prior correlation between price and demand-supply, achieving significant forecast improvements that could save residents millions of dollars annually in tested markets.
Accurate day-ahead electricity price forecasting is essential for residential welfare, yet current methods often fall short in forecast accuracy. We observe that commonly used time series models struggle to utilize the prior correlation between price and demand-supply, which, we found, can contribute a lot to a reliable electricity price forecaster. Leveraging this prior, we propose a simple piecewise linear model that significantly enhances forecast accuracy by directly deriving prices from readily forecastable demand-supply values. Experiments in the day-ahead electricity markets of Shanxi province and ISO New England reveal that such forecasts could potentially save residents millions of dollars a year compared to existing methods. Our findings underscore the value of suitably integrating time series modeling with economic prior for enhanced electricity price forecasting accuracy.