Prediction of Electricity Consumption Based on Genetic Algorithm - RBF Neural

Network

Wu Jian
Zeng Qing-wei, Xu Zhi-Hai
Dispatching and Communication Center
Network Center Jiangxi Electric Power Company
Nanchang University Nanchang , China
Nanchang , China e-mail: w_wujian@163.com
e-mail: zqw@ncu.edu.cn, zhxu@ncu.edu.cn

Abstract—In order to avoid the economic loss due to too much
or too little of electricity consumption, electricity consumption
needs to be predicted. In order to solve the drawbacks of BP
neural network, genetic algorithm and RBF neural network
(GA-RBFNN) is presented to forecast electricity consumption
in the study, and genetic algorithm is introduced and tried in
optimizing the parameters of RBF neural network. The
electricity consumption data and relevant features data of a
certain province from September to December in 2007 are
used as the experimental data. The experiment results indicate
that GA-RBFNN is very suitable for electricity consumption
prediction by relevant features data.
Keywords-electricity consumption; RBF neural network;
genetic algorithm; prediction
I.INTRODUCTION
In order to avoid the economic loss due to too much or
too little of electricity consumption, electricity consumption
needs to be predicted, then science planning will be realized
for electricity consumption[1]. As electricity consumption is
affected by the factors including temperature, wind-force,
dampness, weather condition, etc, its forecasting model is
difficult to be expressed by mathematical model. Recently,
BP neural network is commonly adopted to forecast
electricity consumption due to good nonlinear mapping
capabilities and fault tolerant ability[2,3]. However, BP
neural network has some inherent drawbacks, such as local
optimization solution. In order to solve the drawbacks of BP
neural network, RBF neural network(RBFNN) is applied to
forecast electricity consumption, the kind of neural network
is a feed-forward neural network, which has the global
optimal ability[4,5]. And genetic algorithm is introduced
and tried in optimizing the parameters of RBF neural
network, the method is well suited for searching global
optimal values[6]. Therefore, genetic algorithm and RBF
neural network (GA-RBFNN) is presented to forecast
electricity consumption in the study. The electricity
consumption data and relevant features data of a certain
province from September to December in 2007 are used as
the experimental data. The experiment results show that the
proposed GA-RBFNN model has greater forecasting
accuracy than BP neural network. It is indicated that
GA-RBFNN is very suitable for electricity consumption
prediction by relevant features data.
II. ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION PREDICTION
METHOD BASED ON GENETIC ALGORITHM-RBF
NEURAL NETWORK
A. RBF Neural Network
The RBF neural network is a type of feed-forward neural
network, and radial basis function is used in the neural
network. RBF neural network is composed of an input layer,
a hidden layer and an output layer. In the study, the RBF
neural network has 5 input nodes, m hidden nodes and 1
output nodes, in which the hidden nodes are radial basis
function, and it is described as:
 x − ci 
hi = exp − 2 
i = 1,2,L, m (1)
 2d i 
where ci is the center of the ith RBF hidden node, di is
the width of the ith RBF hidden node, m is the number of
RBF hidden node.
B. Constructing the Training Data
The influence factors of electricity consumption mainly
have maximum temperature, minimum temperature,
wind-force, dampness and weather condition. In the training
data, maximum temperature, minimum temperature,
wind-force, dampness and weather condition are used as
input feature data, electricity consumption data are used as
output data. SVM forecasting model trained by the training
sample is described as:
yi = f (thi , tli , f i , si , qi ) (2)
where th i is maximum temperature; tli is minimum
temperature; f i is wind-force; si is dampness; qi is
weather condition; yi is electricity consumption.

C. Parameters Optimization of RBF Neural Network with

Genetic Algorithm
978-1-4244-5848-6/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE
The forecasting result of RBFNN is affected by the

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center of RBF hidden node c ,the width of RBF hidden node
d ,and the weight of RBF hidden node w ,so the
appropriate parameters c , d and w should be selected to
improve the forecasting result of RBFNN.
GA employed in this study is used to implement efficient
search strategies for optimal parameters c , d and w .The
process of selecting the parameters of RBFNN with GA is
summarized as followings:
Step 1 Code the parameters of RBF neural network
The chromosome is composed of the parameters
c , d and w . Genetic algorithm is started with 20 randomly
generated chromosomes.
Step 2 Evaluate the fitness
The fitness of each individual chromosome is the
negative of the MAPE.
Step 3 GA operator
Chromosome is selected by evaluating the fitness value
of each chromosome. Crossover could be implemented
either across genes [7].Mutation is implemented by flipping
a bit at a binary locus. The crossover rate is set to 0.5. while
the mutation rate is set to 0.05. The new population is
produced by using the selection, crossover and mutation
operation.
Step 4 Judge stopping condition
The same procedures from Step 2 to Step 3 are repeated
TABLE I. THE ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION DATA AND RELEVANT FEATURES DATA OF A CERTAIN PROVINCE FROM SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER IN 2007
until stopping condition is satisfied.
III.CASE ANALYSIS
As shown in Tab.1, the electricity consumption data and
relevant features data of a certain province from September
to December in 2007 are used as the experimental data. The
electricity consumption data from 2007-9-1 to 2007-12-14
are applied to training data, the electricity consumption data
from 2007-12-15 to 2007-12-31 are applied to testing data.
Maximum temperature, minimum temperature, wind-force,
dampness and weather condition are used as input feature
data, electricity consumption data are used as output data.
In order to eliminate the influence of dimension, the
electricity consumption data and relevant features data are
normalized. Then, the data are used to train the
GA-RBFNN forecasting model for electricity consumption
prediction. BPNN is adopted to compare with GA-RBFNN.
Fig.1 shows the electricity consumption forecasting data of
GA-RBFNN and BPNN, and Fig.2 shows forecasting error
of GA-RBFNN and BPNN, which indicates that
GA-RBFNN has greater forecasting accuracy than BPNN.
As shown in Tab.2, the experimental results show that
GA-RBFNN is very suitable for electricity consumption
prediction by relevant features data including maximum
temperature, minimum temperature, wind-force, dampness
and weather condition.

Electricity
Maximum Minimum Wind-force / Dampness / Weather
Date consumption
temperature /oC temperature /oC level g/m3 condition
/104kw.h
2007-9-1 29 23 2 80 Overcast 473.29
2007-9-2 27 21 4 65 Overcast 434.06
overcast and
2007-9-3 26 22 3 70 411.10
rainy
2007-9-4 27 20 4 40 Overcast 394.69
2007-9-5 28 21 2 20 Cloudy 410.31
2007-9-6 30 21 2 20 Fine 431.78

2007-9-7 30 22 2 10 Fine 456.61

2007-9-8 28 22 2 60 Overcast 467.74
……
2007-12-24 9 6 2 70 Sprinkle 545.07

2007-12-25 11 6 2 20 Snow 556.06

2007-12-26 11 7 2 60 Overcast 565.81
2007-12-27 11 8 2 60 Overcast 566.57
2007-12-28 9 6 2 70 Sprinkle 566.75

2007-12-29 10 5 2 20 Cloudy 561.85

2007-12-30 11 5 3 10 Fine 560.54
2007-12-31 9 1 3 10 cloudy 563.35

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 TABLE II. COMPARISON OF ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION FORECASTING DATA BETWEEN GA-RBFNN AND BPNN

GA-RBFNN BPNN
Date Actual values Forecasting Forecasting
Error/% Error/%
values values
2007-12-15 575.87 562.28 2.31 527.85 8.18
2007-12-16 567.79 554.69 2.23 542.48 4.31
2007-12-17 587.22 577.00 1.74 558.44 4.90

2007-12-18 586.76 569.20 2.99 606.43 3.35

2007-12-19 576.57 581.05 0.76 602.04 4.34
2007-12-20 582.08 587.18 0.87 559.79 3.80
2007-12-21 569.30 583.28 2.38 595.52 4.47

2007-12-22 548.45 575.18 4.55 590.81 7.21

2007-12-23 545.60 574.37 4.90 562.22 2.83
2007-12-24 545.07 569.50 4.16 586.76 7.10
2007-12-25 556.06 563.37 1.24 582.38 4.48

2007-12-26 565.81 555.31 1.79 588.70 3.90

2007-12-27 566.57 548.08 3.15 546.97 3.34
2007-12-28 566.75 552.55 2.42 548.93 3.03
2007-12-29 561.85 572.39 1.79 587.70 4.40

2007-12-30 560.54 569.12 1.46 588.91 4.83

2007-12-31 563.35 574.76 1.94 552.31 1.88
MAPE/% 2.39 4.49

Electricity Consumption/
620
Actual
610 GA-RBFNN
BPNN
600

590

580

570

560

550

540

530

520
2007-12-14 2007-12-16 2007-12-18 2007-12-20 2007-12-22 2007-12-24 2007-12-26 2007-12-28 2007-12-30 Date

Figure 1. Electricity consumption forecasting data of GA-RBFNN and BPNN

ІV. CONCLUSION relevant features data of a certain province from September

Genetic algorithm and RBF neural network is presented
to forecast electricity consumption in the study, and genetic
algorithm is introduced in optimizing the parameters of
RBF neural network. The electricity consumption data and
to December in 2007 are used as the experimental data.
Maximum temperature, minimum temperature, wind-force,
dampness and weather condition are used as input feature
data, electricity consumption data are used as output data.
The experiment results show that GA-RBFNN has greater

341
 Figure 2. Forecasting error of GA-RBFNN and BPNN
forecasting accuracy than BP neural network. It is indicated
that GA-RBFNN is very suitable for electricity
consumption prediction by relevant features data.
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