Short-Term Campus Load Forecasting Using CNN-Based Encoder–Decoder Network with Attention

Short-term load forecasting is a challenging research problem and has a tremendous impact on electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. A robust forecasting algorithm can help power system operators to better tackle the ever-changing electric power demand. This paper presents a novel deep neural network for short-term electric load forecasting for the St. John’s campus of Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN). The electric load data are obtained from the Memorial University of Newfoundland and combined with metrological data from St. John’s. This dataset is used to formulate a multivariate time-series forecasting problem. A novel deep learning algorithm is presented, consisting of a 1D Convolutional Neural Network, which is followed by an encoder–decoder-based network with attention. The input used for this model is the electric load consumption and metrological data, while the output is the hourly prediction of the next day. The model is compared with Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM)-based Recurrent Neural Network. A CNN-based encoder–decoder model without attention is also tested. The proposed model shows a lower mean absolute error (MAE), mean squared error (MSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and higher R2 score. These evaluation metrics show an improved performance compared to GRU and LSTM-based RNNs as well as the CNN encoder–decoder model without attention.