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Short-term load forecasting is an essential instrument in power system planning, operation and control. Many operating decisions are based on load forecasts, such as dispatch scheduling of generating capacity, reliability analysis, and maintenance planning for the generators. Overestimation of electricity demand will cause a conservative operation, which leads to the start-up of too many units or excessive energy purchase, thereby supplying an unnecessary level of reserve. On the contrary, underestimation may result in a risky operation, with insufficient preparation of spinning reserve, causing the system to operate in a vulnerable region to the disturbance. In this paper, semi-parametric additive models are proposed to estimate the relationships between demand and the driver variables. Specifically, the inputs for these models are calendar variables, lagged actual demand observations and historical and forecast temperature traces for one or more sites in the target power system. In addition to point forecasts, prediction intervals are also estimated using a modified bootstrap method suitable for the complex seasonality seen in electricity demand data. The proposed methodology has been used to forecast the half-hourly electricity demand for up to seven days ahead for power systems in the Australian National Electricity Market. The performance of the methodology is validated via out-of-sample experiments with real data from the power system, as well as through on-site implementation by the system operator.

Abstract-Long-term electricity demand forecasting plays an important role in planning for future generation facilities and transmission augmentation. In a long-term context, planners must adopt a probabilistic view of potential peak demand levels. Therefore density forecasts (providing estimates of the full probability distributions of the possible future values of the demand) are more helpful than point forecasts, and are necessary for utilities to evaluate and hedge the financial risk accrued by demand variability and forecasting uncertainty. This paper proposes a new methodology to forecast the density of long-term peak electricity demand.Peak electricity demand in a given season is subject to a range of uncertainties, including underlying population growth, changing technology, economic conditions, prevailing weather conditions (and the timing of those conditions), as well as the general randomness inherent in individual usage. It is also subject to some known calendar effects due to the time of day, day of week, time of year, and public holidays.A comprehensive forecasting solution is described in this paper. First, semi-parametric additive models are used to estimate the relationships between demand and the driver variables, including temperatures, calendar effects and some demographic and economic variables. Then the demand distributions are forecasted by using a mixture of temperature simulation, assumed future economic scenarios, and residual bootstrapping. The temperature simulation is implemented through a new seasonal bootstrapping method with variable blocks.The proposed methodology has been used to forecast the probability distribution of annual and weekly peak electricity demand for South Australia since 2007. The performance of the methodology is evaluated by comparing the forecast results with the actual demand of the summer 2007-2008.