Modern energy automation solutions and demand response applications rely on load profiles to monitor and manage electricity consumption effectively. The introduction of smart control systems capable of handling additional fuzzy parameters, such as weather data, through machine learning methods, offers valuable insights in an attempt to adjust consumer behavior optimally. Following recent advances in the field of fuzzy control, this study presents the design and implementation of a fuzzy control system that processes environmental data in order to recommend minimum energy consumption values for a residential building. This system follows the forward chaining Mamdani approach and uses decision tree linearization for rule generation. Additionally, a hybrid feature selector is implemented based on XGBoost and decision tree metrics for feature importance. The proposed structure discovers and generates a small set of fuzzy rules that highlights the energy consumption behavior of the building based on time-series data of past operation. The response of the fuzzy system based on sample input data is presented, and the evaluation of its performance shows that the rule base generation is derived with improved accuracy. In addition, an overall smaller set of rules is generated, and the computation is faster compared to the baseline decision tree configuration.

The stable and efficient operation of power systems requires them to be optimized, which, given the growing availability of load data, relies on load forecasting methods. Fast and highly accurate Short-Term Load Forecasting (STLF) is critical for the daily operation of power plants, and state-of-the-art approaches for it involve hybrid models that deploy regressive deep learning algorithms, such as neural networks, in conjunction with clustering techniques for the pre-processing of load data before they are fed to the neural network. This paper develops and evaluates four robust STLF models based on Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs) coupled with the K-Means and Fuzzy C-Means clustering algorithms. The first set of two models cluster the data before feeding it to the MLPs, and are directly comparable to similar existing approaches, yielding, however, better forecasting accuracy. They also serve as a common reference point for the evaluation of the second set of two models, which further enhance the input to the MLP by informing it explicitly with clustering information, which is a novel feature. All four models are designed, tested and evaluated using data from the Greek power system, although their development is generic and they could, in principle, be applied to any power system. The results obtained by the four models are compared to those of other STLF methods, using objective metrics, and the accuracy obtained, as well as convergence time, is in most cases improved.

Power forecasting is an integral part of the Demand Response design philosophy for power systems, enabling utility companies to understand the electricity consumption patterns of their customers and adjust price signals accordingly, in order to handle load demand more effectively. Since there is an increasing interest in real-time automation and more flexible Demand Response programs that monitor changes in the residential load profiles and reflect them according to changes in energy pricing schemes, high granularity time series forecasting is at the forefront of energy and artificial intelligence research, aimed at developing machine learning models that can produce accurate time series predictions. In this study we compared the baseline performance and structure of different types of neural networks on residential energy data by formulating a suitable supervised learning problem, based on real world data. After training and testing long short-term memory (LSTM) network variants, a convolutional neural network (CNN), and a multi-layer perceptron (MLP), we observed that the latter performed better on the given problem, yielding the lowest mean absolute error and achieving the fastest training time.

In recent decades, the traditional monopolistic energy exchange market has been replaced by deregulated, competitive marketplaces in which electricity may be purchased and sold at market prices like any other commodity. As a result, the deregulation of the electricity industry has produced a demand for wholesale organized marketplaces. Price predictions, which are primarily meant to establish the market clearing price, have become a significant factor to an energy company’s decision making and strategic development. Recently, the fast development of deep learning algorithms, as well as the deployment of front-end metaheuristic optimization approaches, have resulted in the efficient development of enhanced prediction models that are used for electricity price forecasting. In this paper, the development of six highly accurate, robust and optimized data-driven forecasting models in conjunction with an optimized Variational Mode Decomposition method and the K-Means clustering algorithm for short-term electricity price forecasting is proposed. In this work, we also establish an Inverted and Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization approach that is implemented for the optimization of the Variational Mode Decomposition method. The prediction of the day-ahead electricity prices is based on historical weather and price data of the deregulated Greek electricity market. The resulting forecasting outcomes are thoroughly compared in order to address which of the two proposed divide-and-conquer preprocessing approaches results in more accuracy concerning the issue of short-term electricity price forecasting. Finally, the proposed technique that produces the smallest error in the electricity price forecasting is based on Variational Mode Decomposition, which is optimized through the proposed variation of Particle Swarm Optimization, with a mean absolute percentage error value of 6.15%.

The evolution of electricity markets has led to increasingly complex energy trading dynamics and the integration of renewable energy sources as well as the influence of several external market factors contributed towards price volatility. Therefore, day-ahead electricity price forecasting models, typically using some kind of neural network, play a crucial role in the optimal behavior of market agents. The most prominent models and benchmarks rely on improving the accuracy of predictions and the time for convergence by some sort of a priori processing of the dataset that is used for the training of the neural network, such as hyperparameter tuning and feature selection techniques. What has been overlooked so far is the possible benefit of a posteriori processing, which would consider the effects of parameters that could refine the predictions once they have been made. Such a parameter is the estimation of the residual training error. In this study, we investigate the effect of residual training error estimation for the day-ahead price forecasting task and propose an error compensation deep neural network model (ERC–DNN) that focuses on the minimization of prediction error, while reinforcing error stability through the integration of an autoregression module. The experiments on the Nord Pool power market indicated that this approach yields improved error metrics when compared to the baseline deep learning structure in different training scenarios, and the refined predictions for each hourly sequence shared a more stable error profile. The proposed method contributes towards the development of more flexible hybrid neural network models and the potential integration of the error estimation module in future benchmarks, given a small and interpretable set of hyperparameters.

Power forecasting models offer valuable insights on the electricity consumption patterns of clients, enabling the development of advanced strategies and applications aimed at energy saving, increased energy efficiency, and smart energy pricing. The data collection process for client consumption models is not always ideal and the resulting datasets often lead to compromises in the implementation of forecasting models, as well as suboptimal performance, due to several challenges. Therefore, combinations of elements that highlight relationships between clients need to be investigated in order to achieve more accurate consumption predictions. In this study, we exploited the combined effects of client similarity and causality, and developed a power consumption forecasting model that utilizes ensembles of long short-term memory (LSTM) networks. Our novel approach enables the derivation of different representations of the predicted consumption based on feature sets influenced by similarity and causality metrics. The resulting representations were used to train a meta-model, based on a multi-layer perceptron (MLP), in order to combine the results of the LSTM ensembles optimally. This combinatorial approach achieved better overall performance and yielded lower mean absolute percentage error when compared to the standalone LSTM ensembles that do not include similarity and causality. Additional experiments indicated that the combination of similarity and causality resulted in more performant models when compared to implementations utilizing only one element on the same model structure.