The increasing penetration of renewable energy sources tends to redirect the power systems community’s interest from the traditional power grid model towards the smart grid framework. During this transition, load forecasting for various time horizons constitutes an essential electric utility task in network planning, operation, and management. This paper presents a novel mixed power-load forecasting scheme for multiple prediction horizons ranging from 15 min to 24 h ahead. The proposed approach makes use of a pool of models trained by several machine-learning methods with different characteristics, namely neural networks, linear regression, support vector regression, random forests, and sparse regression. The final prediction values are calculated using an online decision mechanism based on weighting the individual models according to their past performance. The proposed scheme is evaluated on real electrical load data sensed from a high voltage/medium voltage substation and is shown to be highly effective, as it results in R² coefficient values ranging from 0.99 to 0.79 for prediction horizons ranging from 15 min to 24 h ahead, respectively. The method is compared to several state-of-the-art machine-learning approaches, as well as a different ensemble method, producing highly competitive results in terms of prediction accuracy.

The increase in renewable energy sources (RESs) in distribution grids is a major driver for achieving green energy goals worldwide. However, RES power inverters affect power quality, increase power losses, and, in certain cases, may cause power interruptions due to harmonics, deterioration of the rate of change of frequency, and inability to rapidly react in grid faults. Today, phasor measurement units (PMUs) are the ultimate tools for real-time monitoring of distribution grids’ health, and they enable several data-driven added-value services such as fast and automated fault detection, isolation, and recovery; state estimation; power quality monitoring; dynamic events analysis, etc. The present paper proposes an open hardware and software PMU platform, which is low cost, high performance, expandable, and, in general, suitable for research and innovation activities. The system is based on two processor modules (a digital signal processor from Texas Instruments TMS320c5517, and a microprocessor System-in-Package from Octavo Systems OSD3358), two local databases of 64 Gbytes each, GPS module, 5G modem interface, as well as analog and signal conditioning circuits to interface three-phase power voltage and current signals. The entire hardware design, schematics, and instrumentation components, as well as all firmware and software functions are completely open source. Pilot operation of the prototype design has been installed in three medium-/low-voltage substations in Cyprus, as well as twelve substations in Spain and Italy.

Short-term load forecasting is a key task for planning and stability of the current and future distribution grid, as it can significantly contribute to the management of energy market for ancillary services. In this paper we introduce the beneficial properties of applications of sparse representation and corresponding dictionary learning to the net load forecasting problem on a substation level. In this context, sparse representation theory can provide parsimonial predictive models, which become attractive mainly due to their ability to successfully model the input space in a self-learning manner, by interacting between theory, algorithms, and applications. Several techniques are implemented, incorporating numerous dictionary learning and sparse decomposition algorithms, and a hierarchical structured model is proposed. The concept of sparsity in each case is embedded throughout the utilization of different regularization forms which include the l ₀ , l ₁ , l ₂ and l ₀ ^tree norms. The observed superiority of the proposed theory, especially the one which embeds the atoms and corresponding coefficients in a tree structure, stems from the construction of the dictionary so as to represent efficiently the ambient electricity signal space and the consequent extraction of sparse basis-vectors. The performance of each model is evaluated using real hourly load measurements from a high voltage/medium voltage (HV/MV) substation and compared with that of widely used machine learning methods. The provided analytical results, verify the effectiveness of hierarchical sparse representation in short-term load forecasting applications, in terms of common accuracy indices.