Short-Term Load Forecasting Based on Elastic Net Improved GMDH and Difference Degree Weighting Optimization

As objects of load prediction are becoming increasingly diversified and complicated, it is extremely important to improve the accuracy of load forecasting under complex systems. When using the group method of data handling (GMDH), it is easy for the load forecasting to suffer from overfitting and be unable to deal with multicollinearity under complex systems. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a GMDH algorithm based on elastic net regression, that is, group method of data handling based on elastic net (EN-GMDH), as a short-term load forecasting model. The algorithm uses an elastic net to compress and punish the coefficients of the Kolmogorov–Gabor (K–G) polynomial and select variables. Meanwhile, based on the difference degree of historical data, this paper carries out variable weight processing on the input data of load forecasting, so as to solve the impact brought by the abrupt change of load law. Ten characteristic variables, including meteorological factors, meteorological accumulation factors, and holiday factors, are taken as input variables. Then, EN-GMDH is used to establish the relationship between the characteristic variables and the load, and a short-term load forecasting model is established. The results demonstrate that, compared with other algorithms, the evaluation index of EN-GMDH is significantly better than that of the rest algorithm models in short-term load forecasting, and the accuracy of prediction is obviously improved.