Inductive Transfer and Deep Neural Network Learning-Based Cross-Model Method for Short-Term Load Forecasting in Smarts Grids

In a real-world scenario of load forecasting, it is crucial to determine the energy consumption in electrical networks. The energy consumption data exhibit high variability between historical data and newly arriving data streams. To keep the forecasting models updated with the current trends, it is important to fine-tune the models in a timely manner. This article proposes a reliable inductive transfer learning (ITL) method, to use the knowledge from existing deep learning (DL) load forecasting models, to innovatively develop highly accurate ITL models at a large number of other distribution nodes reducing model training time. The outlier-insensitive clustering-based technique is adopted to group similar distribution nodes into clusters. ITL is considered in the setting of homogeneous inductive transfer. To solve overfitting that exists with ITL, a novel weight regularized optimization approach is implemented. The proposed novel cross-model methodology is evaluated on a real-world case study of 1000 distribution nodes of an electrical grid for one-day ahead hourly forecasting. Experimental results demonstrate that overfitting and negative learning in ITL can be avoided by the dissociated weight regularization (DWR) optimizer and that the proposed methodology delivers a reduction in training time by almost 85.6% and has no noticeable accuracy losses.