As the development of smart grids is increasing, accurate electric load demand forecasting is becoming more important for power systems, because it plays a vital role to improve the performance of power companies in terms of less operating cost and reliable operation. Short-term load forecasting (STLF), which focuses on the prediction of few hours to one week ahead predictions and is also beneficial for unit commitment and cost-effective operation of smart power grids, is receiving increasing attention these days. Development and selection of an accurate forecast model from different artificial intelligence (AI)-based techniques and meta-heuristic algorithms for better accuracy is a challenging task. Deep Neural Network (DNN) is a group of intelligent computational algorithms which have a viable approach for modeling across multiple hidden layers and complex nonlinear relationships between variables. In this paper, a model for STLF using deep learning neural network (DNN) with feature selection is proposed. A wide range of intelligent forecast models was designed and tested based on multiple activation functions, such as hyperbolic tangent (tanh), different variants of rectifier linear unit (ReLU), and sigmoid. Among the others, DNN with leaky ReLu produced the best forecast accuracy. Regarding the precision of the methods used in this research work, certain output measures, such as absolute percentage error (MAPE), mean square error (MSE), and root mean square error (RMSE) are used. There was also a reliance on multiple parametric and variable details to determine the capability of the smart load forecasting techniques.

In this paper, a computational intelligent technique genetic algorithm (GA) is implemented for the optimization of artificial neural network (ANN) architecture. The network structures are normally selected on the basis of the developer's prior knowledge or hit and trial approach is used for this purpose. ANN based models are frequently used for the prediction of future load, because of their learning and mapping ability to address the non linear nature of electrical load. The proposed technique provides a pathway to determine the best ANN architecture, prior to the training and learning process of neural network. Multi-objective algorithm is proposed in this research which optimizes the ANN architecture that leads to enhancement in load forecast accuracy and reduction in the computational cost. The results of several experiment conducted during this work, exhibits that forecast accuracy is considerably enhanced by using an optimized and reduced ANN structure.

Load forecasting is very essential for efficient and reliable operation of the power system. Uncertainties of weather behavior significantly affect the prediction accuracy, which increases the operational cost. In this study, neural network (NN) based 168 hours ahead short term load forecast (STLF) model is proposed to study seasonal impact of calendar year. The affect of the model inputs such as, weather variables, calendar events and type of a day on load demand is considered to enhance the forecast accuracy. The weight update equations of gradient descent algorithm are derived and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) is used as performance index. The performance of NN is measured in terms of confidence interval, which is based on training, testing, validation and cumulative impact of these phases. The simulations result shows that the forecast accuracy is affected by seasonal variation of input data.