Short-Term Load Forecast in Microgrids using Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract

-This paper presents an artificial neural network (ANN) based model with a back-propagation algorithm for short-term load forecasting in microgrid power systems. Owing to the significant weather factors for such purpose, relevant input variables were selected in order to improve the forecasting accuracy. As remarked above, forecasting is more complex in a microgrid because of the increased variability of disaggregated load curves. Accurate forecasting in a microgrid will depend on the variables employed and the way they are presented to the ANN. This study also shows numerically that there is a close relationship between forecast errors and the number of training patterns used, and so it is necessary to carefully select the training data to be employed with the system. Finally, this work demonstrates that the concept of load forecasting and the ANN tools employed are also applicable to the microgrid domain with very good results, showing that small errors of Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) around 3% are achievable.