Development of an Optimized Neural Network Model using Hyperparameters Optimization for Electrical Load Prediction

Electrical load prediction has become essential to the efficient operation, control and management of modern electric power systems. Various machine learning prediction models have been developed for electrical load prediction, this includes Support Vector Regression, Fuzzy Logic and Neural Network (NN) modelling approaches. However, incorrect selection of model hyperparameters, which are parameters that affect the output of the prediction models, could result in low prediction accuracy of machine learning models. Hence, the development of an optimized NN model for electrical load prediction was presented in this study. Historical daily data of temperature, rainfall, relative humidity and windspeed for Osogbo, Nigeria was obtained from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration website; while electrical load data for the same location was collected from the Transmission Company of Nigeria. The data captured a period of five years (2017 to 2021). The NN models were developed with MATLAB R2022a software, and two hyperparameters, hidden layers and neuron counts, were optimized using the Bayesian optimization technique to enhance the quality of the models. The models were evaluated using mean absolute error (MAE), and root mean square error (RMSE). The MAE and RMSE for the non-optimized NN model were 6.5247 and 8.2725 respectively. Meanwhile, for the optimized NN model, the MAE and RMSE were 5.6571 and 7.4289 respectively. The obtained results show that the optimized NN performed better than the non-optimized NN models. Therefore, for more accurate load prediction, the method developed of this research is suggested for use by utility providers.