A new feature selection and hybrid forecast engine for day-ahead price forecasting of electricity markets

In this paper, a new feature selection and forecast engine is presented for day ahead prediction of electricity prices, which are so valuable for both producers and consumers in the new competitive electric power markets. In a competitive electricity market, forecast of energy prices is a key information for the market participants. However, price signal usually has a complex behavior due to its nonlinearity, non-stationary, and time variance. Also, an appropriate feature selection is crucial for accurate forecasting. In this paper, a two-step approach that identifies a set of candidate features based on the data characteristics proposed and then selects a subset of them using correlation and instance-based feature selection methods, applied in a systematic way. Then, a combination of wavelet transform (WT) and a hybrid forecast method is presented based on neural network (NN) and an optimization algorithms. The proposed method is examined on PJM electricity market and compared with some of the most recent price forecast methods. These comparisons illustrate effectiveness of the proposed strategy.