Forecasting electricity load by a novel recurrent extreme learning machines approach

• Forecasting electricity load is a complex and quite difficult issue.
• Forecasting electricity load is important for reducing electricity costs.
• Recurrent extreme learning machine (RELM) was proposed to forecast electricity load.
• Results showed that RELM can be applied to forecast electricity load effectively.
• RELM has a high potential for training recurrent ANNs and modeling dynamic systems.

Growth in electricity demand also gives a rise to the necessity of cheaper and safer electric supply and forecasting electricity load plays a key role in this goal. In this study recurrent extreme learning machine (RELM) was proposed as a novel approach to forecast electricity load more accurately. In RELM, extreme learning machine (ELM), which is a training method for single hidden layer feed forward neural network, was adapted to train a single hidden layer Jordan recurrent neural network. Electricity Load Diagrams 2011–2014 dataset was employed to evaluate and validate the proposed approach. Obtained results were compared with traditional ELM, linear regression, generalized regression neural network and some other popular machine learning methods. Achieved root mean square errors (RMSE) by RELM were nearly twice less than obtained results by other employed machine learning methods. The results showed that the recurrent type ANNs had extraordinary success in forecasting dynamic systems and also time-ordered datasets with comparison to feed forward ANNs. Also, used time in the training stage is similar to ELM and they are extremely fast than the others. This study showed that the proposed approach can be applied to forecast electricity load and RELM has high potential to be utilized in modeling dynamic systems effectively.