Forecasting energy consumption using a grey model improved by incorporating genetic programming

Energy consumption is an important economic index, which reflects the industrial development of a city or a country. Forecasting energy consumption by conventional statistical methods usually requires the making of assumptions such as the normal distribution of energy consumption data or on a large sample size. However, the data collected on energy consumption are often very few or non-normal. Since a grey forecasting model, based on grey theory, can be constructed for at least four data points or ambiguity data, it can be adopted to forecast energy consumption. In some cases, however, a grey forecasting model may yield large forecasting errors. To minimize such errors, this study develops an improved grey forecasting model, which combines residual modification with genetic programming sign estimation. Finally, a real case of Chinese energy consumption is considered to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed forecasting model. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.