Analysis and comparison of various methods available for load forecasting: An overview

Accurate load forecasting is essential for power system planning and operation. As the electricity end uses expand, load forecasting technique becomes more complicated. Depending on the nature of load variations, one particular method may not be suitable in each case. Before choosing a particular method, an overview of different techniques is required. This paper presents the analysis of various techniques for load forecasting. A comparative analysis is presented to understand the performance of each technique. None of them is found to be perfect alone; the trend is towards hybrid models.