A hybrid ARFIMA and neural network model for electricity price prediction

In the framework of competitive electricity market, prices forecasting has become a real challenge for all market participants. However, forecasting is a rather complex task since electricity prices involve many features comparably with those in financial markets. Electricity markets are more unpredictable than other commodities referred to as extreme volatile. Therefore, the choice of the forecasting model has become even more important. In this paper, a new hybrid model is proposed. This model exploits the feature and strength of the Auto-Regressive Fractionally Integrated Moving Average (ARFIMA) model as well as the feedforward neural networks model. The expected prediction combination takes advantage of each model's strength or unique capability. The proposed model is examined by using data from the Nordpool electricity market. Empirical results showed that the proposed method has the best prediction accuracy compared to other methods. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.