Net demand prediction for power systems by a new neural network‐based forecasting engine

Integration of renewable generations, such as wind and photovoltaic, into electrical power systems is rapidly growing throughout the world. Stochastic and variable nature of these resources makes some operational challenges to power systems. The most effective way to tackle these challenges is short‐term prediction of their available powers. Despite various developed methods to forecast generation of renewable resources, still they have large errors, which may lead to under/over‐commitment of conventional generators in power systems. Prediction of net demand (ND), defined as electrical load minus renewable generations, can provide useful information for accurate scheduling of conventional generators. In this article, characteristics of the time series of electric load, renewable generations and ND are analyzed, and a new hybrid prediction strategy is presented for direct prediction of ND. The training mechanism of the proposed forecasting engine is composed of a new stochastic search method and Levenberg–Marquardt learning algorithm based on an iterative procedure and greedy search. The suggested prediction strategy is tested on different real‐world power systems and its obtained results are compared with the results of several other forecast methods and published literature figures. These comparisons confirm the validity of the developed forecasting strategy. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity 21: 296–308, 2016