Simultaneous day-ahead forecasting of electricity price and load in smart grids

In smart grids, customers are promoted to change their energy consumption patterns by electricity prices. In fact, in this environment, the electricity price and load consumption are highly corrected such that the market participants will have complex model in their decisions to maximize their profit. Although the available forecasting mythologies perform well in electricity market by way of little or no load and price interdependencies, but cannot capture load and price dynamics if they exist. To overcome this shortage, a Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) model is presented which can consider the correlation between electricity price and load. The proposed model consists of three components known as a Wavelet Packet Transform (WPT) to make valuable subsets, Generalized Mutual Information (GMI) to select best input candidate and Least Squares Support Vector Machine (LSSVM) based on MIMO model, called LSSVM-MIMO, to make simultaneous load and price forecasts. Moreover, the LSSVM-MIMO parameters are optimized by a novel Quasi-Oppositional Artificial Bee Colony (QOABC) algorithm. Some forecasting indices based on error factor are considered to evaluate the forecasting accuracy. Simulations carried out on New York Independent System Operator, New South Wales (NSW) and PJM electricity markets data, and showing that the proposed hybrid algorithm has good potential for simultaneous forecasting of electricity price and load. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.