Privacy-preserving peak time forecasting with Learning to Rank XGBoost and extensive feature engineering

In modern power systems, predicting the time when peak loads will occur is crucial for improving efficiency and minimising the possibility of network sections becoming overloaded. However, most works in the load forecasting field are not focusing on a dedicated peak time forecast and are not dealing with load data privacy. At the same time, developing methods for forecasting peak electricity usage that protect customers' data privacy is essential since it could encourage customers to share their energy usage data, leading to more data points for the effective management and planning of power grids. Hence, the authors employ a dedicated Learning to Rank XGBoost algorithm to forecast peak times with only ranks of loads instead of absolute load magnitudes as input data, thereby offering potential privacy-preserving properties. We show that the presented Learning to Rank XGBoost model yields comparable results to a benchmark XGBoost load forecasting model. Additionally, we describe our extensive feature engineering process and a state-of-the-art Bayesian hyperparameter optimisation for selecting model parameters, which leads to a significant improvement of forecasting accuracy. Our method was used in the context of the final round of the international BigDEAL load forecasting challenge 2022, where we consistently achieved high-ranking results in the peak time track and an overall fourth rank in the peak load forecasting track with our general XGBoost model.