Distributional neural networks for electricity price forecasting

We propose a novel machine learning approach to probabilistic forecasting of hourly day-ahead electricity prices. In contrast to recent advances in data-rich probabilistic forecasting that approximate the distributions with some features such as moments, our method is non-parametric and selects the best distribution from all possible empirical distributions learned from the data. The model we propose is a multiple output neural network with a monotonicity adjusting penalty. S...

Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) with rich feature vectors of past values can provide accurate point forecasts for series that exhibit complex serial dependence. We propose two approaches to constructing deep time series probabilistic models based on a variant of RNN called an echo state network (ESN). The first is where the output layer of the ESN has stochastic disturbances and a shrinkage prior for additional regularization. The second approach employs the implicit copula ...

Accurate forecasts of electricity prices are crucial for the management of electric power systems and the development of smart applications. European electricity prices have risen substantially and became highly volatile after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, challenging established forecasting methods. Here, we present a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model for the German-Luxembourg day-ahead electricity prices addressing these challenges. The recurrent structure of the LSTM ...

Power systems operate under uncertainty originating from multiple factors that are impossible to account for deterministically. Distributional forecasting is used to control and mitigate risks associated with this uncertainty. Recent progress in deep learning has helped to significantly improve the accuracy of point forecasts, while accurate distributional forecasting still presents a significant challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel general approach for distributional...

Generative probabilistic forecasting produces future time series samples according to the conditional probability distribution given past time series observations. Such techniques are essential in risk-based decision-making and planning under uncertainty with broad applications in grid operations, including electricity price forecasting, risk-based economic dispatch, and stochastic optimizations. Inspired by Wiener and Kallianpur's innovation representation, we propose a weak...

Electricity is traded on various markets with different time horizons and regulations. Short-term intraday trading becomes increasingly important due to the higher penetration of renewables. In Germany, the intraday electricity price typically fluctuates around the day-ahead price of the European Power EXchange (EPEX) spot markets in a distinct hourly pattern. This work proposes a probabilistic modeling approach that models the intraday price difference to the day-ahead contr...

Operational decisions relying on predictive distributions of electricity prices can result in significantly higher profits compared to those based solely on point forecasts. However, the majority of models developed in both academic and industrial settings provide only point predictions. To address this, we examine three postprocessing methods for converting point forecasts into probabilistic ones: Quantile Regression Averaging, Conformal Prediction, and the recently introduc...

Probabilistic price forecasting has recently gained attention in power trading because decisions based on such predictions can yield significantly higher profits than those made with point forecasts alone. At the same time, methods are being developed to combine predictive distributions, since no model is perfect and averaging generally improves forecasting performance. In this article we address the question of whether using CRPS learning, a novel weighting technique minimiz...

Probabilistic electricity price forecasting (PEPF) is subject of increasing interest, following the demand for proper quantification of prediction uncertainty, to support the operation in complex power markets with increasing share of renewable generation. Distributional neural networks ensembles have been recently shown to outperform state of the art PEPF benchmarks. Still, they require critical reliability enhancements, as fail to pass the coverage tests at various steps on...

This paper presents a generative artificial intelligence approach to probabilistic forecasting of electricity market signals, such as real-time locational marginal prices and area control error signals. Inspired by the Wiener-Kallianpur innovation representation of nonparametric time series, we propose a weak innovation autoencoder architecture and a novel deep learning algorithm that extracts the canonical independent and identically distributed innovation sequence of the ti...