Deep Learning-Based Short-Term Load Forecasting Approach in Smart Grid With Clustering and Consumption Pattern Recognition

Different aggregation levels of the electric grid’s big data can be helpful to develop highly accurate deep learning models for Short-term Load Forecasting (STLF) in electrical networks. Whilst different models are proposed for STLF, they are based on small historical datasets and are not scalable to process large amounts of big data as energy consumption data grow exponentially in large electric distribution networks. This paper proposes a novel hybrid clustering-based deep learning approach for STLF at the distribution transformers’ level with enhanced scalability. It investigates the gain in training time and the performance in terms of accuracy when clustering-based deep learning modeling is employed for STLF. A k-Medoid based algorithm is employed for clustering whereas the forecasting models are generated for different clusters of load profiles. The clustering of the distribution transformers is based on the similarity in energy consumption profile. This approach reduces the training time since it minimizes the number of models required for many distribution transformers. The developed deep neural network consists of six layers and employs Adam optimization using the TensorFlow framework. The STLF is a day-ahead hourly horizon forecasting. The accuracy of the proposed modeling is tested on a 1,000-transformer substation subset of the Spanish distribution electrical network data containing more than 24 million load records. The results reveal that the proposed model has superior performance when compared to the state-of-the-art STLF methodologies. The proposed approach delivers an improvement of around 44% in training time while maintaining accuracy using single-core processing as compared to non-clustering models.