Enhanced short-term flow prediction in power dispatching network using a transfer learning approach with GRU-XGBoost module ding

Abstract

The power dispatching network forms the backbone of efforts to automate and modernize power grid dispatching, rendering it an indispensable infrastructure element within the power system. However, accurately forecasting future flows remains a formidable challenge due to the network’s intricate nature, variability, and extended periods of missing data resulting from equipment maintenance and anomalies. Vital to enhancing prediction precision is the interpolation of missing values aligned with the data distribution across other time points, facilitating the effective capture of nonlinear patterns within historical flow sequences. To address this, we propose a transfer learning approach leveraging the gated recurrent unit (GRU) for interpolating missing values within the power dispatching network’s flow sequence. Subsequently, we decompose the generation of future flow predictions into two stages: first, extracting historical features using the GRU, and then generating robust predictions via eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost). This integrated process termed the GRU-XGBoost module, is applied in experiments on four flow sequences obtained from a power grid company in southern China. Our experimental findings illustrate that the proposed flow prediction model outperforms both machine learning and neural network models, underscoring its superiority in short-term flow prediction for power-dispatching networks.