Search Results (946)

Short-term load forecasting is essential for the reliable, secure, efficient, and economic operation of modern power systems and electricity markets. Among many forecasting strategies, the similar day (SD) approach for short-term load forecasting was among the earliest used to assess power demand and remains one of the most intuitive and widely adopted techniques worldwide. However, over time, increasing system complexity, richer datasets, and advances in computational intelligence have led to the evolution of SD methodologies beyond heuristic-based rule formulations. This work presents a study of the relevant literature on short-term load forecasting using SD methods reported between 2000 and 2025. This study analyzes how similarity is defined, how forecasts are generated, and how both stages interact within the complete forecasting process in the reviewed literature. Based on these criteria, a unified taxonomy is proposed to classify SD methods into conventional, intelligent, and hybrid formulations. This study provides insight into the methodologies, their performance, and the systems in which they have been tested. The results show that SD-based approaches remain competitive for short-term forecasting and that incorporating artificial intelligence techniques can further enhance their accuracy. Full article

The increasing integration of renewable energy sources increases the variability and uncertainty of power systems, requiring advanced prediction-based control strategies. This paper proposes an integrated AutoML–MPC framework for a hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) combining solar and wind generation, biomass, battery energy storage, and a hydrogen chain (electrolyzer and fuel cell). Short-term load and generation forecasts are made using H2O AutoML models, and the energy flow allocation is optimized using model-based control (MPC) formalized in the form of mixed-integer linear programming (MILP). The objective function minimizes electricity imports from the grid and the associated ${\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_2$ emissions, subject to technological constraints. The results obtained showed a clear distribution of short-term (battery) and long-term (hydrogen) storage functions in time: during periods of excess generation, the electrolyzer operated close to nominal mode, and in the deficit phase, the fuel cell was activated, reducing the need for grid imports. The battery ensured fast short-term balancing, while the hydrogen system compensated for the longer-term energy shortage. The forecast models were characterized by high accuracy ($R^2>0.98$), which allowed for reliable planning of energy flows over the MPC horizon. The proposed methodology allows for effective coordination of storage technologies of different time scales, maximum use of renewable generation and reducing the system’s dependence on the external grid. Full article

Accurate medium-horizon load forecasting and risk-aware unit commitment are critical for high-load power systems. This study develops an integrated prediction–optimization framework that couples 744 h recursive load forecasting with uncertainty-aware scheduling. In the forecasting stage, a CNN-LSTM model is tuned by the Dung Beetle Optimizer (DBO), while Monte Carlo Dropout is retained during inference to generate probabilistic trajectories and time-varying prediction intervals. In the scheduling stage, these forecast-derived intervals are embedded into a mixed-integer linear robust unit commitment model through a dynamic uncertainty budget. Using real-world load data from Southern China, the proposed method achieves average RMSE, MAE, MAPE, and R² values of 2941 kW, 2137 kW, 4.33%, and 0.97, respectively. Relative to SARIMA and Informer, the average RMSE is reduced by 48.1% and 26.0%, respectively, while point-forecasting performance remains competitive with XGBoost. The proposed model also provides the best overall interval quality, with average PINAW and Winkler Score values of 0.19 and 17,049, outperforming XGBoost, CNN-LSTM, and Informer. In the scheduling study, the proposed robust strategy reduces average EENS and LOLH to 68.6 kWh and 0.0454 h, respectively, and yields the lowest average generalized total cost of CNY 97.30 million, compared with 124.69 million CNY for the deterministic benchmark and CNY 99.66 million for the chance-constrained benchmark. These results show that forecast uncertainty can be effectively translated into more reliable and economical scheduling decisions. Full article

Incentive-based demand response (DR) programs rely on accurate and trustworthy quantification of customer performance to ensure fair compensation and market efficiency. Estimating the customer baseline load is an important part of this process. It shows how much electricity would be used if there were no DR occurrence. Unlike conventional load forecasting, baseline modeling is inherently unobservable, economically sensitive, and vulnerable to strategic manipulation. With the growing penetration of distributed energy resources, electric vehicles, and intelligent control technologies, traditional baseline estimation approaches face increasing limitations. This paper offers a thorough and future-oriented synthesis of baseline load estimation for incentive-based DR strategies. Current approaches are carefully classified into rule-based, statistical, probabilistic, machine learning (ML), and hybrid intelligence techniques, and their appropriateness for various DR services and client categories is rigorously evaluated. Beyond modeling accuracy, this paper emphasizes market-oriented requirements, including incentive compatibility, simplicity, transparency, privacy preservation, and deployment feasibility. Furthermore, emerging digital trust enablers such as blockchain and FL are reviewed, along with baseline-free and baseline-light alternatives for performance evaluation. Finally, open research challenges and future directions toward interpretable, robust, and market-ready baseline intelligence are discussed. Full article

The optimal dispatch of integrated energy systems (IESs) is strongly affected by uncertainties on both the supply and demand sides. To model wind power uncertainty and embed it into dispatch decision-making, this paper develops a distributed stochastic scheduling method driven by Diffusion-TS-based scenario generation. First, a conditional Diffusion-TS model is developed to generate high-fidelity wind power scenarios from day-ahead forecasts, and a temperature parameter is introduced to balance scenario diversity and fidelity. Second, a distributed stochastic scheduling framework with chance constraints is established, in which the probabilistic constraints are reformulated into a mixed-integer linear programming problem to address source-load fluctuations while preserving subsystem privacy. Third, the block coordinate descent method is used to decompose the system into cooling, heating, and electricity subproblems for iterative solution. Case study results show that the average CRPS of the generated scenarios is 162.16 MW, which is 34% lower than that of the deterministic forecast benchmark. The total cost of distributed deterministic dispatch is 2.8% higher than that of centralized deterministic dispatch, while the total cost of distributed stochastic dispatch is 53.1% higher than that of distributed deterministic dispatch, reflecting the additional economic cost of uncertainty-aware scheduling. Compared with the traditional LHS-Kmeans method, the scenarios generated by Diffusion-TS are closer to the actual wind power output. Although the resulting dispatch cost is higher, the obtained scheduling results are more consistent with realistic wind power conditions. Overall, the proposed method provides a practical technical route for the secure and economical operation of IESs under uncertainty. Full article

Against the backdrop of the global energy transition toward deep electrification, the natural gas industry faces challenges, including increased load forecasting uncertainty and frequent extreme weather impacts. To enhance natural gas load forecasting accuracy and support system resilience planning, this study constructs a forecasting model based on quadratic decomposition and hybrid deep learning, incorporating an electricity substitution coefficient to characterize the coupling substitution effect between electricity and natural gas. Under the basic scenario, the VMD-WPD-TCN-BiGRU model is proposed. It employs variational mode decomposition and wavelet packet denoising for secondary signal denoising, combined with a time-series convolutional network and bidirectional gated recurrent unit to extract temporal features. Experiments demonstrate that, compared to mainstream methods such as CNN, BiLSTM, SVM, and XGBoost, this model achieves statistically significant reductions in MSE (11.11–96.21%), MAE (0.89–76.50%), and MAPE (4.10–67.94%), significantly improving forecasting accuracy. In the deep electrification scenario, the introduction of the electricity substitution coefficient further optimizes peak load forecasting for system pressure days under extreme low temperatures, elevating the overall R² to 0.9905 in the deep electrification scenario. Research indicates that the proposed model not only effectively improves the accuracy of short-term natural gas load forecasting but also provides quantitative support for enterprises to plan peak-shaving facilities, optimize pipeline networks, and respond to extreme weather emergencies in data silo environments. This contributes to strengthening the adaptability and long-term resilience of natural gas systems during the energy transition, thereby supporting the sustainable development of energy infrastructure. Full article

Load forecasting for Integrated Energy Systems (IESs) is critical to enabling multi-energy coordinated optimization and low-carbon scheduling. Facing multi-load types and multi-site high-dimensional heterogeneous data, there remains a global learning challenge stemming from insufficient representation of spatiotemporal coupling features. In response to the multi-source heterogeneous characteristics of IES loads, this paper designs a Spatiotemporal Topology Encoder that maps load data into a tensorized multi-energy spatiotemporal topological representation via fuzzy classification and multi-scale ranking. In parallel, we construct a MultiScale Hybrid Convolver to extract multi-scale, multi-level global spatiotemporal features of multi-energy load representations. We further develop a Temporal Segmentation Transformer and a Steady-State Exponentially Gated Memory Unit, and design a jointly optimized forecasting model that enforces global dynamic correlations and local, steady-state preservation. Altogether, we propose a multi-scale spatiotemporal fusion and steady-state memory-driven load forecasting method for integrated energy systems (MSTF-SMDN). Extensive experiments on a public real-world dataset from Arizona State University demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach: compared to the strongest baseline, MSTF-SMDN reduces cooling load RMSE by 16.09%, heating load RMSE by 12.97%, and electric load RMSE by 6.14%, while achieving R² values of 0.99435, 0.98701, and 0.96722, respectively, confirming its feasibility, efficiency, and promising potential for multi-energy load forecasting in IES. Full article

Virtual power plants (VPPs) aggregate flexible resources, such as distributed photovoltaics (PV), energy storage, and flexible loads, to provide substantial reserve capacity for grid operation. However, the combined effects of renewable energy output uncertainty, load forecast errors, and user-bounded rationality responses lead to significant errors in traditional deterministic VPP reserve assessment methods, severely affecting the balance between system supply and demand. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a credible reserve assessment method that accounts for user-bounded rationality. First, thermodynamic models with on–off constraints for air conditioning loads, energy feasible region, and power constraint models for electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage systems (ESSs), as well as PV forecast error models are established to characterize physical reserve boundaries. Second, prospect theory is introduced to describe user-bounded rationality and a logit-based response probability model is developed. Monte Carlo sampling and kernel density estimation are employed to derive credible reserve sets under different confidence levels, achieving a probabilistic quantification of VPP reserve capacity distribution. Case studies demonstrate that the proposed method accurately characterizes the probabilistic distribution characteristics of VPP reserve provision under multiple uncertainties, providing comprehensive and reliable assessment information for power dispatching agencies. Full article

The global transition towards sustainable and resilient energy systems has emphasized the need for efficient utilization of renewable energy sources (RESs) and rapid electrification of transportation. However, smart grids must address the intermittency of solar and wind power while accommodating the growing demand from electric vehicles (EVs). Hence, in this paper, a data-driven energy management system (EMS) is proposed that combines multivariable forecasting, generation scheduling, and EV charging coordination in a dual-level decentralized framework to increase the efficiency, reliability, and scalability of modern power grids. First, short-term forecasts of solar irradiance, wind speed, and load demand are addressed via five machine learning models ranging from nonlinear to ensemble models. Accordingly, a unified CatBoost-based platform for forecasting these three variables is selected because of its better performance and accuracy. These forecasts are subsequently utilized in a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) framework for optimal generation scheduling in the considered network, fulfilling load demand at reduced electricity and emission costs while maintaining grid stability. Finally, a priority-based scheme is proposed for charging/discharging coordination of the aggregated EVs, minimizing demand variability while fulfilling vehicles’ charging needs and maintaining their batteries’ lifetime. The superiority of the proposed method lies in integrating a multivariable forecasting pipeline, linear MILP generation scheduling, and battery-health-aware V2G coordination in a unified decoupled framework, unlike many recent frontier works that treat these capabilities independently. Simulation results, under different scenarios, confirm that the proposed intelligent EMS can significantly reduce operational fluctuations, satisfy load and EV demands, optimize RES utilization, and support system cost-effectiveness, sustainability, and resilience. Full article

Energy management systems operating under dynamic electricity pricing require fast and cost-optimal control strategies for flexible loads. Mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) can compute theoretically optimal control trajectories but is computationally expensive and typically relies on accurate load forecasts, limiting its practical real-time applicability. This paper proposes a supervised imitation learning (IL) framework that learns optimal setpoint trajectories for a conventional proportional (P) controller directly from electricity price signals and temporal features, thereby eliminating the need for explicit load forecasting. The learned model predicts setpoint trajectories in an open-loop manner, while a lower-level P controller ensures stable closed-loop operation within a two-stage control architecture. The approach is validated in an industrial case study involving load shifting of a refrigeration system under dynamic electricity pricing and benchmarked against MILP optimization, reinforcement learning (RL), heuristic strategies, and various machine learning models. The MILP solution achieves a cost reduction of 21.07% and represents a theoretical upper bound under perfect information. The proposed Transformer model closely approximates this optimum, achieving 19.33% cost reduction while enabling real-time inference. Overall, the results demonstrate that the proposed supervised IL approach can achieve near-optimal control performance with substantially reduced computational effort for real-time energy management applications. Full article

To address the operational challenges of industrial microgrids under different weather conditions, this study proposes an optimal dispatch strategy for energy storage systems under representative weather scenarios. Photovoltaic (PV) power generation is first forecast using a Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) model, while the load input is prepared based on recent historical demand patterns, and the forecasting performance is evaluated under representative sunny and cloudy scenarios. A mathematical microgrid model incorporating PV generation, battery energy storage, load demand, and grid interaction is then established, in which the total operating cost is minimized subject to time-of-use electricity pricing, battery degradation, and state-of-charge (SOC) constraints. Based on this formulation, an optimization-based day-ahead scheduling strategy is implemented. Under the selected representative sunny and cloudy conditions, the proposed method reduced the daily operating cost by 19.93% and 4.44%, respectively. Over seven representative days, the average cost reduction rate reached 12.54%, thereby confirming its economic effectiveness under representative weather scenarios. Full article

Accurate electricity load forecasting has become increasingly challenging in Türkiye due to rapid structural changes in the power system driven by renewable energy expansion. Between 2016 and 2022, solar capacity increased by 130% and wind generation by 83%, resulting in renewable-induced variability exceeding 160%. To assess how different forecasting approaches respond to this evolving environment, Facebook Prophet, XGBoost, and Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) were evaluated using more than 55,000 hourly load observations under a strictly chronological out-of-sample validation framework. The comparative analysis reveals substantial differences in model performance. XGBoost achieved the highest forecasting accuracy, with a Mean Absolute Error of 981.48 MWh, a Root Mean Squared Error of 1344.15 MWh, and a Mean Absolute Percentage Error of 2.72%, while effectively capturing rapid intraday variations and maintaining peak deviations within ±1100 MWh. DNN models delivered competitive overall accuracy (MAE: 997.82 MWh; MAPE: 2.77%) but exhibited a tendency to smooth temporal variations, leading to an underestimation of extreme winter peaks by up to 4100 MWh. In contrast, Prophet showed limited adaptability to the observed structural volatility, producing errors nearly seven times higher than XGBoost (MAE: 7041.79 MWh; RMSE: 8718.14 MWh). Based on these findings, a layered forecasting framework is proposed, employing XGBoost for short-term operational dispatch and reserving statistical models for long-term planning and policy analysis. Full article

Residential photovoltaic (PV)–battery systems are increasingly deployed to reduce electricity costs under time-of-use and demand-charge tariffs, yet their economic value depends critically on how storage is operated over time. Effective control must simultaneously address short-term energy costs, peak-demand exposure, and long-term battery degradation, all under substantial uncertainty in load and PV generation. While optimization-based approaches can achieve strong performance with accurate forecasts, they are sensitive to forecast errors, whereas learning-based methods often neglect degradation effects or deplete the battery prematurely, leading to suboptimal peak-shaving behavior. This paper proposes a forecast-free, degradation-aware reinforcement learning (RL) framework for residential PV–battery energy management that jointly addresses demand-charge mitigation and battery aging. The proposed controller internalizes both calendar aging and rainflow-based cycling degradation within its objective and incorporates demand-aware reward shaping with time-varying penalties on on-peak grid imports. In addition, a complementary state-of-charge reserve mechanism discourages premature battery depletion and improves responsiveness to late on-peak demand surges, despite the absence of explicit load or PV forecasts. Physical feasibility is guaranteed through an execution-time safety layer that enforces all device and operational constraints by construction. The proposed framework is evaluated on high-resolution residential datasets and compared against optimization-based baselines, including a day-ahead scheduler with perfect foresight and a receding-horizon MPC controller using short-horizon forecasts. Overall, the results show that the proposed RL controller substantially reduces demand charges and total electricity costs relative to forecast-based MPC while maintaining degradation-aware operation, demonstrating the potential of forecast-free reinforcement learning as a practical control strategy for residential PV–battery systems under demand-charge tariffs. Full article

Accurate short-term electric load forecasting is essential for the operation and management of energy-intensive manufacturing processes such as quicklime production, for which power demand is driven by stage-based operation, fixed schedules, and abrupt load transitions. This study presents a data-driven forecasting framework based on a Temporal Fusion Transformer (TFT) model applied to real industrial measurements collected during 2024 from an operating quicklime production plant. The dataset comprises hourly average power demand records (kW) measured at a plant level, stage-dependent motor operation, and a fixed working schedule from 08:00 to 18:00 (Monday to Friday), with weekends and non-operational hours characterized by near-zero load. Coke consumption during the calcination stage is included as an additional contextual variable. The TFT model is trained for multi-horizon forecasting and provides probabilistic prediction intervals through quantile regression. Weekly evaluations demonstrate that the proposed approach accurately captures start–stop behavior, peak-load periods, and structured inactivity intervals. In addition to point-wise accuracy metrics, cumulative energy is evaluated by integrating hourly power over the forecasting horizon, allowing the assessment of energy preservation at the operational level. The resulting energy deviation reaches 4.78% for the full horizon and 5.25% when restricted to active production hours, confirming strong consistency between predicted and actual cumulative energy. A comparative analysis against LSTM, GRU, and N-BEATS models shows that recurrent architectures achieve lower MAE and RMSE values, while the TFT model delivers superior cumulative energy consistency, highlighting a trade-off between instantaneous accuracy and operational energy fidelity. Overall, the results demonstrate that the proposed TFT-based framework provides a robust and practically relevant solution for short-term industrial electric load forecasting and decision support in stage-driven manufacturing systems under real operating conditions. Full article

The transition towards sustainable educational campuses requires robust energy management strategies that integrate operational oversight with advanced analytics. This paper presents a campus-scale electricity monitoring system at the University of Algarve, designed to support the institution’s sustainability goals through continuous monitoring, data reliability, portability, and scalability to handle concurrent high-frequency campus-wide telemetry. The system consolidates heterogeneous meters into a unified platform, enabling precise tracking of energy consumption and photovoltaic generation. Beyond operational efficiency, the platform incorporates a data-driven analytical layer featuring short-term forecasting using Prophet, chosen for its computational scalability, and a hybrid anomaly detection scheme combining forecast residuals with Isolation Forest. These capabilities facilitate the early identification of waste and abnormal consumption patterns, directly contributing to energy conservation and carbon footprint reduction. Validated across multiple buildings, the system demonstrates both portability to different energy profiles and high data continuity, reducing the cognitive load on facility managers. By providing a reproducible blueprint for intelligent energy monitoring, this work supports institutions in their pursuit of energy efficiency and sustainable development, aligning operational practices with broader environmental objectives. Full article