Forecasting of Electricity Consumption by Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average Model in Assam, India

Sustainable electricity consumption, which is about balancing economic growth, social development and environmental protection are the core principles of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). Accurate forecasting of electricity consumption is very important for attaining SDG - 7 which aims to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. Through this paper, attempt is made to forecast monthly electricity consumption in Assam. For this purpose, one of the most widely used time series techniques, viz., Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) is applied by considering the time period April, 2013 to February, 2023 to study the seasonal influence on the electricity consumption in Assam. By applying Augmented Dickey Fuller test, it is observed that the data series becomes stationary at first order difference and the result of Canova Hansen test reveals that no seasonal differencing is required for our considering time period. SARIMA (1,1,1) (1,0,1)12 has been selected for forecasting purpose by following the results of Akaike Information Criterion. By analyzing the model statistics, residual ACF and PACF plots of the selected model, it is found that SARIMA (1,1,1) (1,0,1)12 can be effectively recommended for forecasting of monthly electricity consumption in Assam with Mean Absolute Percentage Error as 3.12%.