A Novel Power-Driven Grey Model with Whale Optimization Algorithm and Its Application in Forecasting the Residential Energy Consumption in China

Along with the improvement of Chinese people's living standard, the proportion of residential energy consumption in total energy consumption is rapidly increasing in China year by year. Accurately forecasting the residential energy consumption is conducive to making energy programming and supply plan for the administrative departments or energy companies. By improving the grey action quantity of traditional grey model with an exponential time term, a novel power-driven grey model is proposed to forecast energy consumption as reference data for decision makers. The nonlinear parameter of power-driven grey action quantity is a crucial factor to influence the prediction precision. To promote the prediction accuracy of the power-driven grey model, whale optimization algorithm is adopted to seek for the optimal value of the nonlinear parameter. Two validations on real-world datasets are conducted, and the results indicate that the power-driven grey model has significant advantages on the aspect of prediction performance compared with the other seven classical grey prediction methods. Finally, the power-driven grey model is applied in forecasting the total residential energy and the thermal energy consumption of China.