Echo state network with wavelet in load forecasting

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to improve the accuracy of short time load forecasting to ensure the economical and safe operation of power systems. The traditional neural network applied in time series like load forecasting, easily plunges into local optimum and has a complicated learning process, leading to relatively slow calculating speed. On the basis of existing literature, the authors carried out studies in an effort to optimize a new recurrent neural network by wavelet analysis to solve the previous problems.Design/methodology/approachThe main technique the authors applied is referred to as echo state network (ESN). Detailed information has been acquired by the authors using wavelet analysis. After obtaining more information from original time series, different reservoirs can be built for each subsequence. The proposed method is tested by using hourly electricity load data from a southern city in China. In addition, some traditional methods are also applied for the same task, as contrast.FindingsThe experiment has led the authors to believe that the optimized model is encouraging and performs better. Compared with standard ESN, BP network and SVM, the experimental results indicate that WS‐ESN improves the prediction accuracy and has less computing consumption.Originality/valueThe paper develops a new method for short time load forecasting. Wavelet decomposition is employed to pre‐process the original load data. The approximate part associated with low frequencies and several detailed parts associated with high frequencies components give expression to different information from original data. According to this, suitable ESN is chosen for each sub‐sequence, respectively. Therefore, the model combining the advantages of both ESN and wavelet analysis improves the result for short time load forecasting, and can be applied to other time series problem.