Next 24-hours load forecasting using artificial neural network (ANN)‎ for the western area of Saudi Arabia

Abstract EN

Load forecasting has become in recent years one of the major areas of research in electrical engineering.

Most traditional forecasting models and artificial intelligence neural network techniques have been tried out in this task.

Artificial neural networks (ANN) have lately received much attention, and a great number of papers have reported successful experiments and practical tests.

This paper presents the development of an ANN-based short-term load forecasting model with improved generalization technique for the Regional Power Control Center of Saudi Electricity Company, Western Operation Area (SEC-WOA).

The proposed ANN is trained with weather-related data, special events indexes and historical electric load-related data using the data from the calendar years 2003, to 2007 for training.

The models tested for one week at two different seasons, typically, summer and Ramadan seasons, the mean absolute average error for day-ahead load forecasting are found 1.57% and 1.82% respectively.