COMPARISON OF SHORT-TERM FORECASTING METHODS OF ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION IN MICROGRIDS

Abstract

Context. The current stage of development of the electric power industry is characterized by an intensive process of microgrid development and management. The feasibility of using a microgrid is determined by the fact that it has a number of advantages compared to classical methods of energy generation, transmission, and distribution. It is much easier to ensure the reliability of electricity supply within the microgrid than in large energy systems. Energy consumers in a microgrid can affect the power balancing process by regulating their loads, generating, storing, and releasing electricity. One of the main tasks of the microgrid is to provide consumers with electrical energy in a balance between its generation and consumption. This is achieved thanks to the intelligent management of the microgrid operation, which uses energy consumption forecasting data. This allows to increase the efficiency of energy infrastructure management. Objective. The purpose of this work is to develop short-term electricity consumption forecasting models for various types of microgrid electricity consumers, which will improve the efficiency of energy infrastructure management and reduce electricity consumption. Method. The SARIMA autoregressive model and the LSTM machine learning model are used to obtain forecast values of electricity consumption. AIC and BIC information criteria are used to compare autoregressive models. The accuracy of forecasting models is evaluated using MAE, RMSE, MAPE errors. Results. The experiments that forecast the amount of electricity consumption for the different types of consumers were conducted. Forecasting was carried out for both LSTM and AR models on formed data sets at intervals of 6 hours, 1 day, and 3 days. The forecasting results of the LSTM model met the forecasting requirements, providing better forecasting quality compared to AR models. Conclusions. The conducted study of electricity consumption forecasting made it possible to find universal forecasting models that meet the requirements of forecasting quality. A comparative analysis of developed time series forecasting models was performed, as a result of which the advantages of ML models over AR models were revealed. The predictive quality of the LSTM model showed the accuracy of the MAPE of forecasting electricity consumption for a private house – 0.1%, a dairy plant – 3.74%, and a gas station – 3.67%. The obtained results will allow to increase the efficiency of microgrid management, the distribution of electricity between electricity consumers to reduce the amount of energy consumption and prevent peak loads on the power grid.