Short-term electricity grid maximum demand forecasting with the ARIMAX-SVR Machine Learning Hybrid Model

This paper proposes and discusses the viability of a short-term grid maximum demand forecasting model combining autoregressive integrated moving average with regressors (ARIMAX) and support vector regression (SVR). Grid demand forecasting is essential to generation unit scheduling, maintenance planning and system security. Traditionally, grid demand is forecasted using multivariate linear regression models with parameters adjusted to past data. A disadvantage of the linear regression model is that the parameters require regular adjustment, otherwise the prediction accuracy will deteriorate over time. With recent advances in the field of machine learning and lower computational costs, the usage of machine learning in the power industry becomes increasingly practicable. The proposed model is a machine learning model that combines ARIMAX and SVR to exploit their respective effectiveness in predicting linear and non-linear data. In contrast to linear regression models, the machine learning model automatically updates itself when new data is included. The hybrid model is benchmarked against other forecasting models and demonstrated a marked improvement in accuracy, achieving RMSE of 67.7MW and MAPE of 1.32% in a seven-day forecast.