A Comprehensive Review of the Load Forecasting Techniques Using Single and Hybrid Predictive Models

Load forecasting is a pivotal part of the power utility companies. To provide load-shedding free and uninterrupted power to the consumer, decision-makers in the utility sector must forecast the future demand for electricity with a minimum error percentage. Load prediction with less percentage of error can save millions of dollars to the utility companies. There are numerous Machine Learning (ML) techniques to amicably forecast electricity demand, among which the hybrid models show the best result. Two or more than two predictive models are amalgamated to design a hybrid model, each of which provides improved performances by the merit of individual algorithms. This paper reviews the current state-of-the-art of electric load forecasting technologies and presents recent works pertaining to the combination of different ML algorithms into two or more methods for the construction of hybrid models. A comprehensive study of each single and multiple load forecasting model is performed with an in-depth analysis of their advantages, disadvantages, and functions. A comparison between their performance in terms of Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) values are developed with pertinent literature of several models to aid the researchers with the selection of suitable models for load prediction.