Short-Term Load Forecasting Model Based on Time Series Clustering and Transformer in Smart Grid

Abstract

Accurate Short-Term Load Forecasting (STLF) is a critical task in managing and operating smart grids. Existing STLF methods primarily rely on mathematical modeling or neural networks, often struggle to effectively capture the correlations between influencing factors and load data, and frequently lack interpretability. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an intelligent framework for STLF that combines a pattern extraction and attention mechanism, which leverages the characteristics of electricity consumption data. The proposed framework facilitates the integration of prior knowledge, identifies intrinsic data patterns, and more accurately maps the relationships between influencing factors and load patterns. Finally, we conduct experiments on real-world and publicly available datasets to evaluate the performance of the proposed model. Specifically, the proposed model improves the accuracy of STLF compared to that of existing methods and reduces the mean absolute percentage error by (Formula presented.) to (Formula presented.). The model performs superiorly on the real datasets, with root mean squared error and mean absolute percentage error values of (Formula presented.) MWh and (Formula presented.).