Energy Demand Forecasting

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This page is about the applications of machine learning (ML) in the context of energy demand forecasting. For an overview of energy forecasting more generally, please see the Wikipedia page on this topic.

The supply and demand of power must both be forecast ahead of time to inform electricity planning and scheduling. ML can help make these forecasts more accurate, improve temporal and spatial resolution, and quantify uncertainty.

Background Readings

• Core Concepts and Methods in Load Forecasting. : A comprehensive book that covers methods from both statistics and machine learning for load forecasting, with a focus on low-voltage distribution grids.
• "Energy forecasting: A review and outlook" (2020). : A high level review and overview of the energy forecasting field and challenges.
• "Electrical load forecasting models: A critical systematic review" (2017): A review and taxonomy of electricity load forecasting models.
• "Probabilistic electric load forecasting: A tutorial review" (2016): A tutorial and review of methods of probabilistic electricity load forecasting.
• "Review of Low-Voltage Load Forecasting: Methods, Applications, and Recommendations" (2021): A review of load forecasting with focus of distribution grids containing a chapter on machine learning approaches applied in the field. It further addresses problems in the field like a lack of benchmarks and dataset bias.

Conferences, Journals, and Professional Organizations

Journals

• International Journal of Forecasting: The official journal of the International Institute of Forecasters. Journal website here.
• Foresight: Another journal published by the International Institute of Forecasters with a more applied focus. Journal website here.

Data

General

• See the Electricity Systems page for general electricity systems datasets.

Distribution System

• List of Low-voltage level load data sets: Curated list of smart meter data from the household and building level as well as substation data in the distribution system, available here.

Future Directions

• Decision-integration: As supply and demand forecasts ultimately need to inform power system optimization decisions, a fruitful direction may be to integrate knowledge of how these decisions are made into ML models. For instance, deep neural networks have been used to forecast electricity demand in a way that optimizes for electricity scheduling costs rather than forecast accuracy, and this notion could be extended to optimizing for greenhouse gas emissions.
• Interpretable/explainable ML and uncertainty quantification: Techniques that explain or quantify the uncertainty of forecasts could help power system operators better integrate these forecasts into their operations, and facilitate applications such as robust optimization.

Relevant Groups and Organizations

• International Institute of Forecasters: An organization for researchers, practitioners, and students, publishing the International Journal of Forecasting and organizing the International Symposium on Forecasting (ISF). Homepage here.
• IEEE Working Group on Energy Forecasting and Analytics: A working group for energy forecasting that has organized for instance GEFCOM challenges, homepage here.