Evolving artificial neural networks for short term load forecasting

This paper presents artificial neural networks (ANN) evolved by a genetic algorithm for short-term load forecasting. Using real load values and forecast weather data these ANN have been tested for electric load forecasting on weekdays and weekends. For each day type, the best-evolved artificial neural network was found capable of accurately forecasting one-day ahead hourly loads. The forecasting results obtained using these best-evolved networks were observed to be consistently superior compared to a commonly used statistical method. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.