Electricity consumption prediction using a neural-network-based grey forecasting approach

Electricity consumption is an important economic index and plays a significant role in drawing up an energy development policy for each country. Multivariate techniques and time-series analysis have been proposed to deal with electricity consumption forecasting, but a large amount of historical data is required to obtain accurate predictions. The grey forecasting model attracted researchers by its ability to characterize an uncertain system effectively with a limited number of samples. GM(1,1) is the most frequently used grey forecasting model, but its developing coefficient and control variable were dependent on the background value that is not easy to be determined, whereas a neural-network-based GM(1,1) model called NNGM(1,1) has been presented to resolve this troublesome problem. This study has applied NNGM(1,1) to electricity consumption and has examined its forecasting ability on electricity consumption using sample data from the Turkish Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation energy database. Experimental results demonstrate that NNGM(1,1) performs well.