Cross-temporal aggregation: Improving the forecast accuracy of hierarchical electricity consumption

Spiliotis, Evangelos and Petropoulos, Fotios and Kourentzes, Nikolaos and Assimakopoulos, Vassilios (2018): Cross-temporal aggregation: Improving the forecast accuracy of hierarchical electricity consumption.

Abstract

Achieving high accuracy in load forecasting requires the selection of appropriate forecasting models, able to capture the special characteristics of energy consumption time series. When hierarchies of load from different sources are considered together, the complexity increases further; for example, when forecasting both at system and region level. Not only the model selection problem is expanded to multiple time series, but we also require aggregation consistency of the forecasts across levels. Although hierarchical forecast can address the aggregation consistency concerns, it does not resolve the model selection uncertainty. To address this we rely on Multiple Temporal Aggregation, which has been shown to mitigate the model selection problem for low frequency time series. We propose a modification for high frequency time series and combine conventional cross-sectional hierarchical forecasting with multiple temporal aggregation. The effect of incorporating temporal aggregation in hierarchical forecasting is empirically assessed using a real data set from five bank branches, demonstrating superior accuracy, aggregation consistency and reliable automatic forecasting.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Temporal aggregation; Hierarchical forecasting; Electricity load; Exponential smoothing; MAPA
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C4 - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C5 - Econometric Modeling > C53 - Forecasting and Prediction Methods ; Simulation Methods; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D81 - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty; L - Industrial Organization > L9 - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities > L94 - Electric Utilities

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