The prediction accuracy of support vector regression (SVR) is highly influenced by a kernel function. However, its performance suffers on large datasets, and this could be attributed to the computational limitations of kernel learning. To tackle this problem, this paper combines SVR with the emerging Harris hawks optimization (HHO) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithms to form two hybrid SVR algorithms, SVR-HHO and SVR-PSO. Both the two proposed algorithms and traditional SVR were applied to load forecasting in four different states of Nigeria. The correlation coefficient (R), coefficient of determination (R2), mean square error (MSE), root mean square error (RMSE), and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) were used as indicators to evaluate the prediction accuracy of the algorithms. The results reveal that there is an increase in performance for both SVR-HHO and SVR-PSO over traditional SVR. SVR-HHO has the highest R2 values of 0.9951, 0.8963, 0.9951, and 0.9313, the lowest MSE values of 0.0002, 0.0070, 0.0002, and 0.0080, and the lowest MAPE values of 0.1311, 0.1452, 0.0599, and 0.1817, respectively, for Kano, Abuja, Niger, and Lagos State. The results of SVR-HHO also prove more advantageous over SVR-PSO in all the states concerning load forecasting skills. This paper also designed a hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) that consists of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, wind turbines, and batteries. As inputs, the system used solar radiation, temperature, wind speed, and the predicted load demands by SVR-HHO in all the states. The system was optimized by using the PSO algorithm to obtain the optimal configuration of the HRES that will satisfy all constraints at the minimum cost.
