Electric load forecasting under false data injection attacks via denoising deep learning and generative adversarial networks

Abstract Accurate electric load forecasting at various time periods is considered a necessary challenge for electricity consumers and generators to maximize their economic efficiency in energy markets. Hence, the accuracy and effectiveness of existing electric load forecasting approaches depends on the data quality. Nowadays, with the implementation of modern power systems and Internet of Things technology, forecasting models are faced with a large volume of data, which puts the security and health of data at risk due to the use of numerous measuring devices and the threat of cyber‐attackers. In this study, a cyber‐resilient hybrid deep learning‐based model is developed that accurately forecasts electric load in short‐term and long‐term time horizons. The architecture of the proposed model systematically integrates stacked multilayer denoising autoencoder (SMDAE) and generative adversarial network (GAN) and is called SMDAE‐GAN. In the proposed framework, SMDAE layer is used to pre‐process and remove real fs and intentional anomalies in data, and GAN layer is also utilized to forecast electric load values. The effectiveness of the SMDAE‐GAN structure is studied using realistic electrical load data monitored in the distribution network of Tabriz, Iran, and meteorological data measured in weather station there. Compared with other conventional load forecasting approaches, the developed framework has the highest accuracy in both cases of using normal data with real‐world noise and damaged data under false data injection attacks.