An Ensemble Deep-Learning-Based Model for Hour-Ahead Load Forecasting with a Feature Selection Approach: A Comparative Study with State-of-the-Art Methods

The realization of load forecasting studies within the scope of forecasting periods varies depending on the application areas and estimation purposes. It is mainly carried out at three intervals: short-term, medium-term, and long-term. Short-term load forecasting (STLF) incorporates hour-ahead load forecasting, which is critical for dynamic data-driven smart power system applications. Nevertheless, based on our knowledge, there are not enough academic studies prepared with particular emphasis on this sub-topic, and none of the related studies evaluate STLF forecasting methods in this regard. As such, machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) architectures and forecasters have recently been successfully applied to STLF, and are state-of-the-art techniques in the energy forecasting area. Here, hour-ahead load forecasting methods, the majority of which are frequently preferred high-performing up-to-date methods in the literature, were first examined based on different forecasting techniques using two different aggregated-level datasets and observing the effects of these methods on both. Case and comparison studies have been conducted on these high-performing methods before, but there are not many examples studied using data from two different structures. Although the data used in this study were different from each other in terms of the time step, they also had very different and varied features. In addition, feature selection was studied on both datasets and a backward-eliminated exhaustive approach based on the performance of the artificial neural network (ANN) on the validation set was proposed for the development study of the forecasting models. A new DL-based ensemble approach was proposed after examining the results obtained on two separate datasets by applying the feature selection approach to the working forecasting methods, and the numerical results illustrate that it can significantly improve the forecasting performance compared with these up-to-date methods.