Load forecasting in different scale and horizon - a review

A review of the latest load forecasting techniques will be presented in this paper, in the context of different scale and horizons. Today, the competitive energy market demands more accurate forecasting at different scales, ranging from a single smart-meter (end-user) up to a whole power grid system. As a result of this market need, load forecasting is considered today as an essential part of the electricity industry’s planning process. In other hand the large volumes of data generated by the vast amount of smart meters calls for intelligent methods and solutions for the real-time data analytics. Although some past review papers investigate load forecasting, but a very few reviews are done by considering all different scales and horizons. An up to date survey of load forecasting techniques will also be presented by considering new trends such as distributed load forecasting, cloud computing techniques, real-time, and stream processing algorithms.