A new hybrid correction method for short-term load forecasting based on ARIMA, SVR and CSA

Accurate load-forecasting problem is a significant and vital issue, especially in the new competitive electricity market. The models that are employed for forecasting purposes would determine how reliable the last forecasted results are. Therefore, this paper proposes a new hybrid correction method based on autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, support vector regression (SVR) and cuckoo search algorithm (CSA) to achieve a more reliable forecasting model. The proposed method gets use of the autocorrelation function (ACF) and the partial ACF to search the stationary or non-stationary behaviour of the investigated time series. In the case of non-stationary data, it will be differenced one or more times to become stationary. After that, Akaike information criterion is utilised to find the appropriate ARIMA model such that the linear component of the data would be captured. Therefore, the ARIMA residuals would contain the non-linear components that should be modelled by use of the SVR model. The role of CSA as a successful optimisation algorithm is to find the optimal SVR parameters for more accurate forecasting. Meanwhile, a novel self-adaptive modification method based on CSA is proposed to empower the total search ability of the algorithm effectively. The proposed method is applied to the empirical peak load data of Fars Electrical Power Company in Iran.