Regression-Based Methods for Daily Peak Load Forecasting in South Korea

Abstract

This study examines the daily peak load forecasting problem in South Korea. This problem has become increasingly important due to the continually changing energy environment. As such, it has been studied by many researchers over the decades. South Korea is geographically located such that it experiences four distinct seasons. Seasonal changes are among the main factors affecting electricity demand. In addition, much of the electricity consumption in a strong manufacturing country like South Korea is driven by industry rather than by residential customers. In order to forecast daily peak loads of South Korea, in this study we proposed multiple linear regression-based methods where several season-specific regression models (i.e., summer, winter, and all-season models) were included. The most appropriate model among the three models was selected considering the characteristics of the electricity demand, and was then applied to daily forecasting. The performance of the proposed methods were evaluated through computational experiments. Forecasts obtained by the proposed methods were compared with those obtained by existing forecasting methods, including a machine learning method. The results showed that the proposed methods had mean absolute percentage errors around 1.95% and outperformed all benchmarks.