Short term load forecasting in electric power systems: A comparison of ARMA models and extended wiener filtering

On-line prediction of electric load in the buses of the EHV grid of a power generation and transmission system is basic information required by on-line procedures for centralized advanced dispatching of power generation. This paper presents two alternative approaches to on-line short term forecasting of the residual component of the load obtained after the removal of the base load from a time series of total load. The first approach involves the use of stochastic ARMA models with time-varying coefficients. The second consists in the use of an extension of Wiener filtering due to Zadeh and Ragazzini. Real data representing a load process measured in an area of Northern Italy and simulated data reproducing a non-stationary process with known characteristics constitute the basis of a numerical comparison allowing one to determine under which conditions each method is more appropriate.