Recurrent inception convolution neural network for multi short-term load forecasting

Smart grid and microgrid technology based on energy storage systems (ESS) and renewable energy are attracting significant attention in addressing the challenges associated with climate change and energy crises. In particular, building an accurate short-term load forecasting (STLF) model for energy management systems (EMS) is a key factor in the successful formulation of an appropriate energy management strategy. Recent recurrent neural network (RNN)-based models have demonstrated favorable performance in electric load forecasting. However, when forecasting electric load at a specific time, existing RNN-based forecasting models neither use a predicted future hidden state vector nor the fully available past information. Therefore, once a hidden state vector has been incorrectly generated at a specific prediction time, it cannot be corrected for enhanced forecasting of the following prediction times. To address these problems, we propose a recurrent inception convolution neural network (RICNN) that combines RNN and 1-dimensional CNN (1-D CNN). We use the 1-D convolution inception module to calibrate the prediction time and the hidden state vector values calculated from nearby time steps. By doing so, the inception module generates an optimized network via the prediction time generated in the RNN and the nearby hidden state vectors. The proposed RICNN model has been verified in terms of the power usage data of three large distribution complexes in South Korea. Experimental results demonstrate that the RICNN model outperforms the benchmarked multi-layer perception, RNN, and 1-D CNN in daily electric load forecasting (48-time steps with an interval of 30 min).