CHAPTER -1

INTRODUCTION
1.1

Background

With the changing environment and modernization of the electric power system industry, the
traditional operating methods of the power system companies are in the process of up-gradation
and new methods and technologies are continuously coming up and are being accepted by the
industry. The main priority for every electrical utility is the ability to provide reliable and
continuous supply of electricity to the consumers. For proper operation of the power system,
there must be a balance between the demand and supply of electricity. Therefore, it is important
for all electrical utilities to perform effective planning of resources [1].The basic functions in
the operation of power generation plants such as fuel allocation, unit commitment, as well as
maintenance scheduling should be optimized to a proper value so as to minimize the system
operating cost.
Since the economy of the operation and control of power systems is sensitive to the system
demand, large amount of savings in operating costs can be obtained if the accuracy of load
demand forecast is increased. If there is a large forecast error, then the power system operation
can be risky, since there can be a difference between the demand and supply. If the load demand
is overestimated, then it results in the operation of too many generation units or excess energy
purchase than what is required. This situation results in producing an unnecessary amount of
reserve energy. On the other hand if the load demand is under estimated it can lead to
insufficient amount of electrical supply to feed the load. This situation can result in disturbing
the balance of the power system and can cause serious problems like blackouts etc. Supplying
the excess load with the help of emergency power resources can be expensive and it usually
results in the situation where the electrical utility have to pay more as compared to the case
when there is a normal supply of power. It is obvious that if there is an improvement in load
forecasting accuracy, it will lead to economic savings and an increase in system security.
In the past, most of the algorithms which were used for load forecasting depended on statistical
analysis. Recently, the interest of the studies which were being carried out in the area of load
forecasting has been shifted to a technique called the Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The
ANN systems have shown outstanding performance in data classification, function
approximation, and mapping problems. The ANN systems are also being widely used for load

forecasting purposes. The main advantage of using ANN systems is that they have the ability
to learn the properties of the load, which usually cannot be determined or require very complex
analysis in order to discover them. A number of papers have been published on this topic and
most of them have described that ANN-based load forecasters have been accepted and have
performed well for many electric utilities in different parts of the world.
Load forecasting for a region depends on the load and weather characteristics of that particular
region. Even though many researchers have performed successful experiments using ANN
models, there is no common load forecasting model that can be generally applied to forecast
load in all the regions across the globe. The reason is that the factors that have strong influence
on the load vary from region to region. This shows another big advantage of the ANN-based
load forecasting system since the network can be trained with the variables local to that region.
The development of a statistical model requires high cost and relatively long time before an
acceptable performance in the normal operation is obtained. But by using Artificial Neural
Network systems, the well-organized structure can be developed in a shorter period.
1.2

Overview of the Thesis

These challenges become even more significant in the present situation, when the number of
power generation and distribution companies is increasing and there is competition between
these companies to provide more reliable and economic supply of electricity to the consumers
[5], [9]. In the past, most of the electrical utilities were not concerned about minimizing their
cost due to the reason that they were the only electricity producers in their service areas and
the consumers had no choice and they had to purchase electricity from them whatever may be
the cost. This led to various problems such as inefficient electricity production, irrational
pricing policies, as well as overstaffing.
As a result, open market concept was initialized to reduce the operating cost. In the competitive
market environment, efficiency has become the top priority for all the electrical utilities and it
is closely related to the demand forecasting. An underestimated or overestimated system
demand can lead to profit loss. Thus, the basic operational functions of the power system such
as generation resource planning and unit commitment scheduling should be effectively carried
out so as to perform well in the market competition. So, the accuracy of load forecast is the
primary requirement for every electrical utility. Load forecasting can be generally classified
into many categories, depending on the time for which load is to be forecasted. In this study,
attention has been paid to the analysis of the application of Artificial Neural Networks for one-

hour-ahead load forecasting. This is also called short-term load forecasting (STLF), and it is an
important factor to achieve optimal operation of the generation control functions such as the
hydro scheduling, unit commitment and hydrothermal coordination.
1.3

Outline of the thesis

Chapter 1 Discusses the basic idea and introduction of the load forecast problem
and the benefits of load forecast during different time frames. Conventional
approaches for short-term load forecast problems are also presented
Chapter 2 Provides basic fundamentals of, literature survey and the structure of
network utilized in STLF application, as well as training methods. Current
applications of ANN in power system operation are presented at the end of the chapter 5
Chapter 3 Focuses on the design of load forecasting and STLF program. The system
of the target utility is analysed. This chapter explains the ideas under the
development process. Experiments to justify appropriate structure of load forecasting
models in the program will be described together with simulation results from different
load forecasting structures.
Chapter 4 Presents the actual online result of the designed program compared to the
results from the adaptive ANN for load-forecast tool in the EMS. This chapter also
includes the impact of forecast temperature error on the model performance.
Chapter 5 Gives the final result analysis of hourly load fore casting using artificial
neural network.
Chapter 6 Gives the Conclusion and future work of this thesis work and some
recommendations for future research.