Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 3628–3635

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Applied Soft Computing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/asoc

A spiking neural network (SNN) forecast engine for short-term

electrical load forecasting
Santosh Kulkarni ∗ , Sishaj P. Simon, K. Sundareswaran
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Short-term load forecasting (STLF) is one of the planning strategies adopted in the daily power system
Received 4 June 2012 operation and control. All though many forecasting models have been developed through the years,
Received in revised form 28 February 2013 the uncertainties present in the load profile significantly degrade the performance of these models. The
Accepted 8 April 2013
uncertainties are mainly due to the sensitivity of the load demand with varying weather conditions,
Available online 24 April 2013
consumption pattern during month and day of the year. Therefore, the effect of these weather variables
on the load consumption pattern is discussed. Based on the literature survey, artificial neural networks
Keywords:
(ANN) models are found to be an alternative to classical statistical methods in terms of accuracy of the
Spiking neurons
Spike response model (SRM)
forecasted results. However, handling of bulk volumes of historical data and forecasting accuracy is still a
ANN major challenge. The development of third generation neural networks such as spike train models which
Hybrid model are closer to their biological counterparts is recently emerging as a robust model. So, this paper presents a
load forecasting system known as the SNNSTLF (spiking neural network short-term load forecaster). The
proposed model has been tested on the database obtained from the Australian Energy Market Operator
(AEMO) website for Victoria State.
© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction under in these types of forecasts. Long term forecasting on the

Power system operation, planning and setting up of power gen-
eration infrastructure in any nation depends upon the growth in
the power consumption by its population. Due to the depletion
of fossil fuels, increase in population and increase of per capita
power consumption in the world, forecasting of electrical load has
become one of the major areas of research. Load forecasting is gen-
erally carried out to assist planners in making strategic decisions
with regards to unit commitment, hydro-thermal co-ordination,
interchange evaluation, and security assessments. Electrical load
forecasting, in general is classified into three categories; short-
term, medium term and long-term forecasting [1]. The duration for
these categories is not explicitly defined in the literature papers.
Thus, different authors use different time horizons to define these
categories. Short-term load forecasting, in general ranges from few
minutes to seven days [2]. Since in power system, the next day’s
power generation must be scheduled every day, short-term load
forecasting (STLF) is necessary for economic scheduling of genera-
tion capacity. Medium-term or intermediate load forecasting deals
with predictions ranging from few weeks to several months [3].
Outage scheduling and maintenance of plants and networks come
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 0431 2513298; fax: +91 0431 2500133.
E-mail addresses: santosh.kulkarni1988@gmail.com, vibrantsantu@gmail.com
(S. Kulkarni), sishajpsimon@nitt.edu (S.P. Simon).
other hand deals with forecasts longer than a year [3]. It is pri-
marily intended for capacity expansion plans, capital investments,
and corporate budgeting. These types of forecasts are often com-
plex in nature due to several uncertainties such as political factors,
economic situation, per capital growth. Planning of new networks
and extensions to existing power system for both the utility and
consumers require long-term forecasts.
Short-term load forecasting is, however, considered as very a
difficult task. First, because the load series is complex and exhibits
several levels of seasonality: the load at a given hour is depend-
ent not only on the load at the previous hour, but also on the
loads at several past hours, even on the loads at past days. Sec-
ondly, the consumption pattern is dependent on the prevailing
weather conditions [4]. Also, due to power system deregulation, it
has become more important i.e., these forecasts are used by energy
management system (EMS) to establish operational plans for power
stations and to plan transactions in the energy market. A very good
example about the importance of load forecasting accuracy is that
an increase in 1% of forecasting error caused an estimated increase
of ten million pounds of operating costs for one electrical util-
ity in United Kingdom [5]. Thus, the accuracy of STLF reduces the
operating costs of electrical utilities in many areas. However, the
most important issue in STLF is to extrapolate past load behav-
ior while taking into account effect of other influencing factors
such as weather and day of the week. In a power system, tempera-
ture is usually the most dominant variable in driving the electricity

1568-4946/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2013.04.007
 S. Kulkarni et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 3628–3635
6.5
Load (MW)
5.5
4.5
3.5
0 5 10
Temperature (Celsius)
Fig. 1. Hourly load variations with respect to temperature change – Victoria (January 2004).
demand. A sample scattered plot showing the variations in the con-
sumption pattern with respect to average temperatures is shown
in Fig. 1. It is obvious that the relationship between temperature
and load demand is non-linear. Previous research work and their
results are prone to large errors, when the load forecasting model
is exposed to large weather forecast errors. Therefore, improving
the quality of weather forecasting is an effective way to improve
the load forecasting accuracy [6–10].
As indicated above, STLF is an important area and this is reflected
in the literature with many traditional and non-conventional
techniques like regression analysis [11–13], time series approach
[14,15], neural networks [16–22], fuzzy logic [23–26] and support
vector machines [27,28] etc. Based on the literature survey, though
various STLF have been proposed, the scope for developing more
efficient and accurate models is still a major challenge.
Section 1 gives an introduction about short-term load fore-
casting (STLF) and its importance in power system planning. The
proposed work and the justification in applying SNN to STLF are
discussed in Section 2. The details about SNN, the step by step
training algorithm (spike propagation algorithm) and the setting
of control parameters are given in Section 3. In Section 4, the pro-
posed methodology for implementation of SNN to STLF is discussed.
Section 5 investigates the results obtained during the training and
testing of SNN. The conclusion and the scope for further research
are presented in Section 6.
2. Proposed work
The proposed work uses spiking neural networks for STLF. The
SNNs have evolved due to the significant growth achieved in the
field of neurophysiology and information processing in brain. It has
been discovered that the neural processing inside the brain is car-
ried out in the form of spike trains and not real valued signals. As
a result, the artificial neuron that has found closeness to its bio-
logical counterpart is known as spiking neuron and the network
based upon this type of neurons is known as spiking neural network
(SNN). A typical circuit model of spiking neuron was first proposed
in 1952 as Hodgkin–Huxley [29,30] model. The spiking neurons are
generally divided into three types: threshold, compartment and
conductance based [31]. The threshold model is again divided into
two types. They are non linear leaky integrate and fire model; and
the spike response neuron model (SRNM) [32].
In the proposed work, the SRNM has been used in the feed
forward SNN. However, an understanding of neural coding is nec-
essary for encoding information in terms of spike trains which
is given in [33,34]. The methods of encoding real values include
rate encoding, population encoding and temporal encoding [35].
In this work, precise time of spikes in the temporal encod-
ing scheme has been implemented. This scheme is chosen since
3629
15 20 25 30 35 40
temporally encoded neurons have better computational ability in
spatio temporal context [35]. Temporal encoded SNN have been
used for pattern recognition proposed by Bohte in [36]. In [35],
authors have successfully tested the performance of temporal
encoded SNN for electricity time series forecasting using evolution-
ary learning technique. However, in this work, an attempt has been
made to forecast electrical load using gradient method. The spike
propagation algorithm is similar to the gradient descent method
used for feedforward backpropagation neural network. The real
time dataset is obtained from Australian Energy Market Operator
(AEMO) website [37]. The data consist of half hourly load of each day
from January 2004 to December 2009. The data is pre-processed by
normalizing the load between 0 and 1. The historical data of hourly
temperature values are obtained from [38]. The historical data for
daily solar radiation is obtained from [39].
3. Spiking neural network
The input and the output of a spiking neuron are described by a
series of firing times known as the spike train. One firing time means
the instant the neuron has fired a pulse. The potential of a spik-
ing neuron is modeled by a dynamic variable and works as a leaky
integrator of the incoming spikes and the newer spikes contribute
more to the potential than the older spikes. If this integrated sum
of the incoming spikes is greater than a predefined threshold level,
then the neuron fires a spike. This makes SNN a dynamic system,
in contrast with the second generation sigmoid neural networks
which are static, and enables it to perform computation on tempo-
ral patterns in a very natural biological manner. Though its likeness
is closer to the conventional back propagation ANN, the difference
lies in having many numbers of connections between individual
neurons of successive layers as in Fig. 2. Formally between any two
neurons ‘e’ and ‘f’, input neuron ‘e’ receives a set of spikes with firing
times te . The output neuron ‘f’ fires a spike only when membrane
potential exceeds its threshold value (). The internal state variable
xf (t) is described by the spike response function ε (t) weighted by
1
Wef1 d1 wef (t t i d1)
k
te Wefk wef (t t e d k )
tf
dk f
e
m
wef (t ti d m)
Wefm m
d
Fig. 2. Multiple delayed synaptic terminals between two neurons (e and f).
3630 S. Kulkarni et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 3628–3635

Input Layer Output Layer Step 7: Calculate the error, the difference between the actual spike
Index:i Index:j
time and the desired spike time.
i=1
h=1 j=1 n 2
E = .5 ∗ (tja − tjd ) (6)
i=2 j=1

tj-Output Spikes
j=2
ti -Input Spikes

h=2
where tja is the actual output spike and tjd is the desired output spike
i=3 j=3
h=3 and n is the number of neurons in the output layer.
Step 8: Adjust weights of the network in such a way that mini-
i=4
h=4 j=5 mizes the training error. Then, repeat the steps 4–8 for each pair
of input and output vectors of the training set until the error for
h=q
the entire system is acceptably low. The equations for change in
i=p j=n weights between the hidden and output layer and input and hidden
Hidden Layer Index:h layers are given below.
Change in weights from hidden layer (h) to output layer (o) is
Fig. 3. Architecture of a multilayer spiking neural network.
given as
k k a
Whj = −˛ıh Yih (th ) (7)
the synaptic efficacy. i.e., the weight between the two neurons is
given in Eq. (1) tjd − tja
where, ıj =  (8)
 m
k,h
k (∂Yk/hj(t a )/∂t a )
Whj j j
xf (t) = Yek Wef
k
(1)
k=1 Change in weight from input (i) to hidden layer (h) is given as
k k a
where, m is the number of synaptic terminals between two neurons Wih = −˛ıh Yih (th ) (9)
e and f.
k is the weight of the sub-connection k, and Y gives   n
Where, Wef ıj k (∂Y k (t a )/∂t a )
Whj
k hj j h
the unweighted contribution of all spikes to the synaptic terminal
j=1
and is given in Eq. (2) as where ıh =  k (∂Y k (t a )/∂t a )
(10)
k,i
Wih ih h h
Yik (t) = ε(t − ti − d ) k
(2)
3.2. Setting of control parameters
dk is the delay between the two nodes in the kth synaptic termi-
nal. ε(t) is the spike response function shaping the post synaptic The proposed SNN has the following adjustable parameters:
potential (PSP) of a neuron which is given in Eq. (3), Number of hidden nodes (h), weights (Wih and Whj ), learning rate
t 1−t/ (˛) and decay time constant (). As with many other forecast
ε(t) = e (3)
 methods, the accuracy of the proposed SNN is dependent on the
appropriate adjustment of its parameters. Mean square error (MSE)
where  is the membrane potential decay time constant.
is considered as the performance index for adjustment of the con-
trol parameters. The range for each of the parameter is selected as
3.1. Training algorithm for SNN
W ∈ [0.01, 3], number of hidden layer neurons h ε [12, 30], number
of synaptic connections k ∈ [10, 20], decay time constant  ∈ [4, 8],
The SNN is a 3 layer network with a single hidden layer as shown
and learning rate ˛ ∈ [0.0005, 0.01]. Initially, training samples are
in Fig. 3. The parameters which affect the performance of the pro-
constructed for a period of 300 days. Keeping the other parame-
posed SNN are discussed in Section 3.2. The step by step procedure
ters constant, within the selected neighborhood, the weights from
of the spike propagation algorithm [37] is given below.
input to hidden layer and hidden to output layer are varied and
Step 1: Prepare an initial dataset. The dataset is normalized
the training process is stopped when MSE obtained is minimum.
between 0 and 1.
Now with the weights being set, and keeping all other parame-
Step 2: Generate the weights to small random values. Initial-
ters constant, the number of hidden layer neurons is varied. The
ize the SNN parameters such as membrane potential decay time
number of neurons in the hidden layer determines the network’s
constant () and learning rate (˛).
learning capabilities. The selection of the number of hidden neu-
Step 3: For the proposed SPNN architecture, input layer (i), hid-
rons is an important issue in network design. So, optimal number
den layer (h) and output layer (o), do the steps 4–8 ‘itt’ times (itt = no
of hidden layer neurons are selected and varied within the given
of iterations). The network indices represents the number of neu-
neighborhood and trials are carried out till least MSE is obtained.
rons where, p = number of neurons in the input layer; q = number of
The number of synaptic connections is another important param-
neurons in the hidden layer; n = number of neurons in the output
eter for obtaining reliable results from the network. The number
layer; m = number of synaptic terminals between any two neurons
of connections between two neurons is varied for each trial. The
of successive layers.
setting for which least MSE is obtained is selected. For the feed for-
Step 4: For each pattern in the training set apply the input vector
ward network used in this problem, the delay value in each synaptic
to the network input.
connection is increased in steps of 2 ms. It should also be noted that
Step5: Calculate the internal state variable of the hidden layer
the delay in each terminal may not be same. The next parameter
neurons. It is given by Eq. (4).
to be set with respect to the order of precedence is the decay time
 m constant value () which depends on the coding interval (t). The
xh (t) = Yik Wih
k
(4)
i k=1 coding interval (t) is the difference between the minimum value
and maximum value of the normalized input spikes which is prob-
Step 6: Calculate the network output which is given by Eq. (5)
lem dependent.  is varied for each trial, but the best possible result
 m is obtained when the coding interval is equal to the decay time con-
xj (t) = Yhk Whj
k
(5)
h k=1 stant. The last parameter to be tuned is the learning rate ˛. For high
 S. Kulkarni et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 3628–3635
Phase 1
Training Input (Actual Max. & Min Temp)
Binary Inputs
Historical Weather SNN 1
Test Input (Forecasted Max. & Min Temp)
Database
E1
Fig. 4. Block diagram of the proposed SNNSTLF engine.
values of ˛, the MSE obtained after SNN training is very large and
did not converge. Therefore, small values are considered.
However, it should be noted that minimizing the MSE during
training phase of the SNN may lead to over fitting problem. Hence,
SNN begins to memorize the training samples instead of learning
them. When over fitting occurs in a SNN, the MSE continues to
decrease and it seems that the training process progresses, while
in fact the generalization capability of the SNN degrades and it loses
its forecasting ability for the unseen forecast samples. To overcome
this problem, the generalization performance of the SNN should
also be monitored during its training phase. Since the forecast error
is not available in the training phase, validation error is used as an
approximation. For SNN learning, validation samples are a subset
of training period that are not used for the adjustment of the con-
trol parameters of the SNN. Thus, the validation samples can give a
better estimate of the error for the forecast samples. Whenever the
validation error increases, the generalization performance of the
SNN begins to degrade. It indicates the occurrence of over fitting
problem, and so the training process of the SNN by the spike prop-
agation algorithm should be terminated at this iteration. Thus, the
iteration with the minimum validation error gives the final results
of the SNN training.
4. Implementation of Snn for Stlf
The design of SNN model to perform load forecast includes
determination of model structure, selection of training algorithm
and input variables, which significantly influence the network per-
formance. The architecture and the selection of input variables are
discussed in Sections 4.1.1 and 4.1.2.
4.1. Proposed SNN architecture for STLF problem
The implementation of the proposed model is divided into two
phases. The block diagram shown in Fig. 4 consists of 2 SNN’s in a
sequential manner. E1 and E2 represent the training errors of SNN1
and SNN2 respectively. In phase two, the forecasted temperature
values are given as input to SNN2 to forecast the load pattern.
4.1.1. Phase 1
In Phase 1, using SNN1, a day ahead hourly temperature profile
is forecasted. The input data consists of hourly temperatures of the
previous 2 days (12 neurons), hourly humidity values of the previ-
ous 2 days (12 neurons), maximum solar radiation of the previous
day (1 neuron) and the corresponding month encoded in binary
3631
Phase 2
Binary Inputs
Forecasted Load Pattern
Training Input
SNN 2
Historical Load
Database
E2
form. The twelve months in the yearly calendar are encoded in
binary form (0001 to 1100). For example, if the binary represen-
tation is 0010, it represents month of July (4 neurons). The target
values consist of the corresponding hourly temperatures on the day
of forecast (6 neurons). Therefore, SNN1 consists of 29 input nodes
6 output nodes, respectively. Training is carried out for 4 times with
the input data divided into 4 parts of a day consisting of 24 h. The
first part consists of hourly weather variables from 12 A.M to 5 A.M.
Similarly, the other 3 parts consist of data for the remaining time
horizon. For each of the four input formats, the temperatures for
6 h are forecasted. Therefore, all the 24 hourly temperatures are
forecasted. The maximum and the minimum temperatures of the
forecasted day is recorded and used as test input for SNN2. The
above scheme of testing and training in Phase 1 is carried out for the
city of Melbourne in Victoria. The same procedure is repeated for
the city of Geelong in Victoria. The objective of the forecast engine
is to forecast the electrical load for the state of Victoria in Australia.
Therefore, to have an accurate forecasts result, the weather data
for 2 cities are considered in Phase 1. Finally, the maximum and
the minimum forecasted temperatures for the 2 cities is recorded
which will be acting as 4 test inputs for SNN2 in Phase 2. The best
combination of parameters for SNN1 is Wih ∈ (1, 2), Whj ∈ (2, 3),
h = 15, k = 12,  = 7 ms and ˛ = 0.001.
The cross correlation analysis between temperature and humid-
ity is shown in Fig. 5. It enables to choose the number of input
variables with some time lag which affect the other variable. As
seen in the figure, the cross correlation coefficients obtained for
a time lag of 1–5 h are highly negative. Therefore, humidity val-
ues for 6 h are chosen as inputs to the forecasting model. A similar
analysis performed on the maximum temperature and maximum
solar radiation is shown in Fig. 6. It is observed that the coefficient
1
Cross Correlation Function
0.5
0
-0.5
-1
-150 -100 -50 0 50 100 150
Lags
Fig. 5. Cross correlation function between temperature and humidity.
3632 S. Kulkarni et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 3628–3635

1 5. Results and discussion

Cross Correlation Function

0.8

0.6
5.1. Performance evaluation
0.4
The accuracy of the results in this paper is evaluated in this
0.2 paper based on three error indices. They are mean absolute per-
0 centage error (MAPE), normalized mean square error (NMSE) and
-0.2 error variance (EV). MAPE is defined by the following equation.
 
1   Pi − Ai 
-0.4 NH
-400 -300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300 400
Lags
MAPE =
NH
 A  (11)
i
i=1
Fig. 6. Cross correlation function between temperature and solar radiation.
NMSE [41] is defined as
 
1 
NH
NMSE = (Pi − Ai )2 (12)
2 NH
obtained at zero lag is greater than any other coefficient. Therefore, i=1
solar radiation of the previous day is taken as an input variable for
SNN1. The form of cross correlation function (ACF) adopted here 1  NH
where  = (Ai − AAve )2 (13)
follows that of Box, Jenkins, and Reinsel, specifically [40]. NH − 1
i=1

4.1.2. Phase 2
In Phase 2, a day ahead half hourly load profile is forecasted. For
example, if the load pattern of Monday is given as test input, the
load pattern of Tuesday is forecasted. For producing accurate load
forecasts, the best combination of input variables is required. Here
in this paper, apart from historical load data, the factors which have
significant impact on the consumption pattern like day of the week,
weather variables, holiday effect, etc., are chosen as inputs to the
network. The topology of SNN2 included the following variables as
inputs:
One day half hourly lagged load: (48 neurons)
One day lagged temperature values (minimum and maximum val-
ues): (4 neurons)
Forecasted temperature values obtained from Phase 1 (minimum
and maximum values): (4 neurons)
Maximum and minimum demand in the last 24 h: (2 neurons)
Average temperature value in the last seven days: (2 neurons)
Day of the week is encoded in binary form: (001 to 111). For exam-
ple, if the binary representation is 010, it represents Tuesday (3
neurons).
Month number: (0001 to 1100) (4 neurons)
Holiday effect: (0 – holiday; 1 – working day) (1 neuron)
The corresponding target training data consists of half hourly load
on the day of forecast. Therefore, the SNN2 model has 68 input
neurons and output 48 neurons, respectively. It is observed the fol-
lowing set of control parameters provided the best results during
the training of the SNN2 model: Wih ∈(2, 3), Whj ∈(1, 2), h = 10, k = 8,
 = 5 ms and ˛ = 0.0006.
EV [41] is defined as
1 
NH  P − A  2
 i 
2 =
NH
 A i  − MAPE (14)
i=1
i
where, Pi and Ai are the i predicted and actual values respectively,
AAve is the mean of the actual value and NH is the total number of
predictions.
5.2. Numerical results
The performance of the SNN is compared with the ANN and
Hybrid model in presented in reference [42] for short-term load
forecast. The ANN model in [42] is a 3 layer feed forward network
trained using the Levenberg–Marquardt approach. The hyperbolic
tangent function has been used in both hidden and output layers
since it can produce positive and negative values, which can speed
up the training process. The Hybrid method in [42] is an adaptive
two stage network with self organized map (SOM) and support vec-
tor machine (SVM). The data from AEMO website [37] from October
2008 to March 2009 is used to test the proposed SNNSTLF model.
Table 1 gives the average mean absolute error (MAE) and MAPE
obtained for each month from October 2008 to March 2009. From
Table 1, it is obvious that the proposed forecast engine is able to
perform better than ANN and Hybrid models [42]. It is found out
that the average MAPE given in the last row of Table 1 is 2% less than
the Hybrid Model and 19.76% less than the ANN model in [42].
Table 2 compares the MAPE and MAE obtained when the actual
and the forecasted temperature values are fed as inputs to SNN2
model. It is to be noted that the actual temperature values cannot be
obtained for real time load forecasting. Only the forecasted temper-
atures can be used for real time forecasting. However, to investigate
the performance of SNN2, the actual values of the temperature are

Table 1
Monthly performance comparison.

Month SNN (forecasted temperature as input to SNN2) Hybrid[42] ANN[42]

MAE MAPE MAE MAPE MAE MAPE

October 2008 123.56 2.11 121.83 2.15 134.87 2.57

November 2008 118.58 2.06 123.50 2.12 140.52 2.63
December 2008 119.25 2.09 116.34 2.17 126.39 2.49
January 2009 129.26 2.10 126.73 2.14 168.04 2.81
February 2009 111.54 1.92 119.07 1.95 139.68 2.37
March 2009 109.56 1.90 116.49 1.94 123.21 2.29

Average 118.62 2.03 120.66 2.08 138.79 2.53

 S. Kulkarni et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 3628–3635 3633

Table 2 Table 5
Average monthly performance comparison. Performance evaluation on all weekdays – February 2009.

Month SNN (forecasted SNN (actual temperature January 09 Influence of weather variables
Temperature as input to as input to SNN2)
SNN2) Including weather variables Excluding weather
(Phase 1 and Phase 2) variables (Phase 2)
MAE MAPE MAE MAPE
Day MAPE Max. APE MAPE Max. APE
December 2008 119.25 2.09 111.86 1.98
January 2009 129.26 2.10 113.29 2.07 Monday 1.94 8.45 5.95 9.65
February 2009 111.54 1.92 105.52 1.84 Tuesday 1.96 7.26 5.98 7.52
March 2009 109.56 1.90 100.78 1.79 Wednesday 1.87 7.33 5.78 9.17
Thursday 1.82 7.33 5.78 9.17
Average 113.62 2.00 104.86 1.92 Friday 1.90 8.18 6.07 8.28
Saturday 1.95 8.84 9.21 15.37
Sunday 2.03 8.38 9.62 19.28
Table 3
Average monthly performance comparison.

Month SNN (forecasted SNN (actual temperature 7

temperature as input to as input to SNN2)
6.5
SNN2)

Load (MW)
6
EV NMSE EV NMSE

December 2008 0.172 0.0689 0.164 0.0675 5.5

January 2009 0.198 0.0784 0.189 0.0725 Actual Load
5
February 2009 0.185 0.0526 0.174 0.0508 Forecasted Load
March 2009 0.182 0.0537 0.177 0.0498
4.5

4
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
taken from the historical data and the errors are calculated. From
Time (Half Hour)
Table 2, it is observed that an improvement of 4% and 7.77% of MAPE
and MAE (respectively) is achieved, if actual temperature is used as Fig. 7. 5 January 2009.
inputs to SNN2 model. This analysis shows that if the accuracy of the
forecasted temperature is increased, then electrical load forecasts
7
can be enhanced to a certain extent.
A comparative analysis using EV and NMSE is tabulated in 6.5

Table 3. It is observed from the table that the EV and NMSE obtained 6
Load (MW)

are less when actual historical temperature values are fed as inputs
to the SNNSTLF engine. However, the values obtained for the two 5.5
Actual Load
cases do not differ by a large value. The results computed in 5 Forecasted Load
Tables 2 and 3 show that the performance of the forecast engine for
4.5
the months of February and March is much better than the results
obtained for the month of January. This is mainly attributed due 4
the abnormal high peak load demands occurring due to the high 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

temperatures in the month of January. Time (Half Hour)

To understand the influence of weather variables on load pat-
tern, SNN2 is trained and tested using solely the historical load data.
The results evaluated on each week day for the months of January
and February is tabulated in Tables 4 and 5, respectively. The mean
absolute percentage error (MAPE) and maximum absolute percent-
age error (Max. APE) calculated with the incorporation of weather
variables for all the Mondays in January is 74% and 8.94% less than
when the weather variables are excluded.
Error analysis carried out for the month of February is pre-
sented in Table 5. It is found that the average MAPE (incorporating
temperature) obtained for all Mondays in February is 6% less
Fig. 8. 12 January 2009.
than the average MAPE obtained in January. The MAPE and Max.
APE computed for Saturdays and Sundays are higher than the
other weekdays for both January and February. The MAPE and
the maximum absolute percentage error for other typical week
days (Tuesday to Friday) is presented in Tables 4 and 5. From the
above analysis, it is concluded that the accuracy of the tempera-
ture forecasts will indirectly enhance the performance of the load
forecasting model.

Table 4
7
Performance evaluation on all weekdays – January 2009.

January 09 Influence of weather variables 6.5

Load (MW)

Including weather variables Excluding weather

6
(Phase 1 and Phase 2) variables (Phase 2)

Day MAPE Max. APE MAPE Max. APE 5.5 Actual Load
Forecasted Load
Monday 2.08 8.15 8.03 8.95
5
Tuesday 2.02 7.46 8.07 8.07
Wednesday 2.00 7.23 6.92 9.35
Thursday 2.04 8.45 7.36 8.31 4.5
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Friday 2.03 8.25 6.49 9.23
Time (Half Hour)
Saturday 2.21 8.78 9.81 19.37
Sunday 2.28 9.15 10.83 24.65
Fig. 9. 25 February 2009.
3634 S. Kulkarni et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 3628–3635
6.5
6 0.14
Load (MW)
5.5
Actual Load
Forecasted Load
5 0.06
4.5
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Time (Half Hour)
Fig. 10. 23 March 2009.
Figs. 7–10 compare the half hourly one day-ahead load pattern
with the actual load pattern when forecasted temperatures are con-
sidered as inputs to the proposed SNNSTLF. It is observed from these
figures that the forecasted curve is almost close to the actual load
curve. In Figs. 7 and 8, the MAPE calculated is 2.12% and 2.04%,
respectively. In Fig. 7, the MAPE obtained for the first 12 h (24 obser-
vations) is found to be 1.91% and it is 2.33% for the remaining time
horizon. The actual peak load is 6600 MW, where as the forecasted
peak demand is 6515 MW. The average error obtained (Fig. 8) is
2.03%, 1.94% and 2.03% for the first 8 h (16 observations), for the
next 8 and for the remaining time horizon, respectively. The actual
peak load demand observed in Fig. 8 is 6652 MW, whereas the peak
load obtained from the forecasted curve is 6510 MW. Higher devi-
ations from the actual load pattern are observed from 12 P.M. to
6 P.M. The maximum and the minimum absolute error obtained
during the forecast period in Fig. 8 are 324.7 MW and 3.9 MW,
respectively.
The MAPE computed for half hourly one day-ahead forecasts
in Figs. 9 and 10 is 2.01% and 1.92%, respectively The minimum
absolute error obtained for the half hourly one day ahead fore-
casts shown in Figs. 9 and 10 is 0.002 MW. The maximum absolute
percentage error obtained in Figs. 9 and 10 is 4.23% and 4.01%,
respectively. In Fig. 11, the forecasted load curves with and without
the weather variables are plotted. It is obvious that the forecasted
curve including weather variables follows the actual load pattern
more closely that the other curve (without weather variables).
Fig. 12 shows the variation in the absolute percentage error for the
forecasted load patterns shown in Fig. 11. It indicates that the per-
centage error in the forecasted curve is significantly reduced when
the weather variables are incorporated in SNN2. All the load values
in the y-coordinates for Figs. 7–11 are scaled by a factor of 1000 i.e.,
if the load is 6500 MW, it is scaled to 6.5.
The total average time taken for training the SNNSTLF model is
8 min. All the codes for SNN are developed in the Matlab Version
2007b. The hardware configuration of the computer used is Intel
Core I5 processor with 2.53 GHz CPU, 4 GB RAM and the operating
system used is Windows 7 Home Premium.
6.5
Actual Load
6 Forecasted Load (including Weather Variables)
Forecasted Load (excluding Weather Variables)
Load (MW)
5.5
5
4.5
4 [13] J.M. Vilar, R. Cao, G. Aneiros, Forecasting next day electricity demand and price
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Time (Half Hour)
Fig. 11. 3 January 2009.
0.18
Absolute Percentage Error(%)
0.16 SNN(including Weather Variables)
SNN (excluding WeatherVariables)
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.04
0.02
40 45 50 0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47
Time (Half Hour)
Fig. 12. 3 January 2009.
6. Conclusion
A new forecast engine based on SNN for short term load forecast-
ing is presented. The results obtained from the proposed forecast
engine are compared with previous existing models available in the
literature. The SNNSTLF model involves the SNN handling historical
data in an efficient manner with increased training accuracy. It can
effectively correlate the non-linear relationship between load pat-
tern and several other factors such temperature, humidity, week
day, month of the year etc. This paper also validates the improve-
ment in the performance of the third generation neural networks
compared to that of the second generation neural networks such
as the Levenberg back propagation neural network and support
vector machine based on self organizing map (Hybrid model). The
proposed model can be used in the power system operation and
planning environment. It can be extended to other power system
forecasting applications such as electricity price forecasting, wind
power generation forecasting, solar radiation forecasting.
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