Forecasting electricity prices with machine learning: Predictor sensitivity
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Purpose: Trading on electricity markets occurs such that the price settlement takes place before delivery, often day-ahead. In practice, these prices are highly volatile as they largely depend upon a range of variables such as electricity demand and the feed-in from renewable energy sources. Hence, accurate forecasts are demanded. Approach: This paper aims at comparing different predictors stemming from supply-side (solar and wind power generation), demand-side, fuel-related and economic influences. For this reason, we implement a broad range of non-linear models from machine learning and draw upon the information-fusion-based sensitivity analysis. Findings: We disentangle the respective relevance of each predictor. We show that external predictors altogether decrease root mean squared errors by up to 21.96 accuracy of the proposed machine learning models is superior. Originality: The benefit of adding further predictors has only recently received traction; however, little is known about how the individual variables contribute to improving forecasts in machine learning.
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