Prediction of the Energy Consumption Variation Trend in South Africa based on ARIMA, NGM and NGM-ARIMA Models

Minglu Ma,Zhuangzhuang Wang

doi:10.3390/en13010010

Abstract

South Africa’s energy consumption takes up about one-third of that in the whole African continent, ranking the first place in Africa. However, there are few researches on the prediction of energy consumption in South Africa. In this study, based on the data of South Africa’s energy consumption during 1998–2016, Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model, nonlinear grey model (NGM) and nonlinear grey model–autoregressive integrated moving average (NGM-ARIMA) model are adopted to predict South Africa’s energy consumption during 2017–2030. After using these NGM, ARIMA and NGM-ARIMA, the mean absolute percent errors (MAPE) are 2.827%, 2.655% and 1.772%, respectively, which indicates that the predicted result has very high reliability. The prediction results show that the energy consumption in South Africa will keep increasing with the growth rate of about 7.49% in the next 14 years. This research result will provide scientific basis for the policy adjustment of energy supply and demand in South Africa and the prediction techniques used in the research will have reference function for the energy consumption study in other African countries.

Highlights

South Africa’s energy consumption ranks the first place in Africa, accounting for one-third of that in the whole African continent [1]
The operation process of the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA), nonlinear grey model (NGM) and NGM-ARIMA models will be divided into fitting and forecasting
Specific to the prediction result of the research, we will discuss the following two aspects: Firstly, from the analysis of prediction model, the energy consumption tendency predicted by the two models is consistent and the error is less than 3% after the detection of mean absolute percent errors (MAPE)

Summary

Introduction

South Africa’s energy consumption ranks the first place in Africa, accounting for one-third of that in the whole African continent [1]. South Africa’s energy development level can reflect its energy supply–demand status, and will have an important influence on the overall energy development level in Africa. The prediction of South Africa’s future energy consumption will be beneficial to understand South Africa’s future energy supply–demand level from another aspect. Africa’s economic development level and people’s living standards. It will be of reference significance for the energy policy-makers and market participants in other African countries. The economy in Africa has enjoyed rapid development, and scholars have paid more attention to the energy demand and consumption in Africa [3]. Among the present researches in the energy field, few people have focused on research in South

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Conclusion