Temporal difference method for multi-step prediction: application to power load forecasting

The authors discuss a power load forecasting system based on a temporal difference (TD) method. The temporal difference method is a class of statistical learning procedure specialized for future prediction. The conventional back propagation (BP) has been successfully applied to power load forecasting in a one-to-one single-step prediction manner. The authors adopt a method which can gradually improve its prediction accuracy through the time evolution. In addition, a modified temporal difference (MTD) method which uses a different error function is evaluated and compared with the original one.<>