Electricity Demand Forecasting in Future Grid States: A Digital Twin-Based Simulation Study

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Bayer, Daniel R., Haag, Felix, Pruckner, Marco, Hopf, Konstantin
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Bayer, Daniel R.
Haag, Felix
Pruckner, Marco
Hopf, Konstantin
author_facet Bayer, Daniel R.
Haag, Felix
Pruckner, Marco
Hopf, Konstantin
contents Short-term forecasting of residential electricity demand is an important task for utilities. Yet, many small and medium-sized utilities still use simple forecasting approaches such as Synthesized Load Profiles, which treat residential households similarly and neither account for renewable energy installations nor novel large consumers (e.g., heat pumps, electric vehicles). The effectiveness of such "one-fits-all" approaches in future grid states--where decentral generation and sector coupling increases--are questionable. Our study challenges these forecasting practices and investigates whether Machine Learning (ML) approaches are suited to predict electricity demand in today's and in future grid states. We use real smart meter data from 3,511 households in Germany over 34 months. We extrapolate this data with future grid states (i.e., increased decentral generation and storage) based on a digital twin of a local energy system. Our results show that Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) approaches outperform SLPs as well as simple benchmark estimators with up to 68.5% lower Root Mean Squared Error for a day-ahead forecast, especially in future grid states. Nevertheless, all prediction approaches perform worse in future grid states. Our findings therefore reinforce the need (a) for utilities and grid operators to employ ML approaches instead of traditional demand prediction methods in future grid states and (b) to prepare current ML methods for future grid states.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_04757
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Electricity Demand Forecasting in Future Grid States: A Digital Twin-Based Simulation Study
Bayer, Daniel R.
Haag, Felix
Pruckner, Marco
Hopf, Konstantin
Computers and Society
Machine Learning
Systems and Control
I.2.6; G.3; I.6.6; J.2
Short-term forecasting of residential electricity demand is an important task for utilities. Yet, many small and medium-sized utilities still use simple forecasting approaches such as Synthesized Load Profiles, which treat residential households similarly and neither account for renewable energy installations nor novel large consumers (e.g., heat pumps, electric vehicles). The effectiveness of such "one-fits-all" approaches in future grid states--where decentral generation and sector coupling increases--are questionable. Our study challenges these forecasting practices and investigates whether Machine Learning (ML) approaches are suited to predict electricity demand in today's and in future grid states. We use real smart meter data from 3,511 households in Germany over 34 months. We extrapolate this data with future grid states (i.e., increased decentral generation and storage) based on a digital twin of a local energy system. Our results show that Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) approaches outperform SLPs as well as simple benchmark estimators with up to 68.5% lower Root Mean Squared Error for a day-ahead forecast, especially in future grid states. Nevertheless, all prediction approaches perform worse in future grid states. Our findings therefore reinforce the need (a) for utilities and grid operators to employ ML approaches instead of traditional demand prediction methods in future grid states and (b) to prepare current ML methods for future grid states.
title Electricity Demand Forecasting in Future Grid States: A Digital Twin-Based Simulation Study
topic Computers and Society
Machine Learning
Systems and Control
I.2.6; G.3; I.6.6; J.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.04757