Energy consumption predictions using a neural network

Solar and wind energy’s popularity seems to be on the rise and does not show signs of stopping. However, renewable energy resources tend to be unreliable due to unexpected weather. This may lead to an unstable electrical grid, which causes blackouts and additional problems. These issues could be dealt with using multiple energy management systems that are available to help reduce the risk and stabilize the electrical grid. This study aims to examine the capability of these Smart Grids to become smarter and more accurate and whether energy consumption could be forecast in order to use it in small and big renewable energy plants. This study found that to be easily achievable and with great accuracy. In fact, the minimum amount of training data required to achieve good results across all horizon sizes (1, 2, and 7 days) is one year as concluded by the results. However, a small period of two months is enough to forecast small periods from an hour up to 24 h. Additionally, the LSTM network was found to be most suitable.