An MT-Transformer Framework for Coordinated Wind–Solar–Load Forecasting with Net-Load-Based Coal-Power Regulation Demand Identification

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4108/ew.13035

Keywords:

MT-Transformer, joint wind–solar–load forecasting, multi-task learning, net-load fluctuation, coal-power regulation demand

Abstract

Data-driven forecasting has become increasingly important for describing the temporal interactions among heterogeneous variables in modern power systems. To capture the nonlinear coupling, heterogeneous fluctuations, and multi-scale temporal variations between renewable generation and load demand, this study develops an MT-Transformer framework for coordinated wind–solar–load forecasting. Meteorological variables, historical renewable output, historical load, and temporal labels are integrated as model inputs. A shared Transformer encoder is used to learn common temporal representations, and task-specific forecasting heads are designed to generate synchronized predictions for wind power, PV power, and load. The experimental results show that MT-Transformer achieves an MAE of 0.0848, an RMSE of 0.1254, and an R² of 0.9302. Compared with the Persistence Model, the MAE and RMSE decrease by 36.05% and 30.49%, respectively. The predicted outputs are further converted into a net-load sequence, from which fluctuation indicators are derived. The peak–valley difference reaches 0.462 p.u., and the maximum ramp rate reaches 0.087 p.u./h, indicating evident peak-shaving pressure and short-term regulation demand. These findings confirm that the proposed framework improves coordinated forecasting performance and provides quantitative evidence for coal-power peak regulation, reserve capacity allocation, and ancillary service demand identification.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

[1] Zhang S, Chen W. Assessing the energy transition in China towards carbon neutrality with a probabilistic framework[J]. Nature Communications, 2022, 13: 87.

[2] An K, Zheng X, Shen J, et al. Repositioning coal power to accelerate net-zero transition of China’s power system[J]. Nature Communications, 2025, 16(1): 2400.

[3] Yin G, Li B, Fedorova N, et al. Orderly retire China’s coal-fired power capacity via capacity payments to support renewable energy expansion[J]. iScience, 2021, 24(11): 103287.

[4] Lin B, Liu Z. Assessment of flexible coal power and battery energy storage system in supporting renewable energy[J]. Energy, 2024, 313: 133805.

[5] Hirth L. The market value of variable renewables: The effect of solar wind and solar power variability on their relative price[J]. Energy Economics, 2013, 38: 218-236.

[6] Tziolis G, Livera A, Theocharides S, et al. Net load forecasting: A comprehensive literature review[J]. Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments, 2025, 82: 104450.

[7] Kerkau S, Sepasi S, Howlader H O R, et al. Day-ahead net load forecasting for renewable integrated buildings using XGBoost[J]. Energies, 2025, 18(6): 1518.

[8] Telle J S, Upadhaya A, Schönfeldt P, et al. Probabilistic net load forecasting framework for application in distributed integrated renewable energy systems[J]. Energy Reports, 2024, 11: 2535-2553.

[9] Song Z, Gu Y, Liu H, et al. Application of deep learning in wind, solar, and ocean energy: An analysis of prediction, optimization, and operation & maintenance[J]. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2026, 230: 116663.

[10] Hasan M, Mifta Z, Papiya S J, et al. A state-of-the-art comparative review of load forecasting methods: Characteristics, perspectives, and applications[J]. Energy Conversion and Management: X, 2025, 26: 100922.

[11] Malakouti M. Machine learning for renewable energy forecasting: Advances, challenges, and future directions[J]. Sustainable Energy Research, 2026, 13: 14.

[12] Gupta M, Arya A, Varshney U, et al. A review of PV power forecasting using machine learning techniques[J]. Progress in Engineering Science, 2025, 2(1): 100058.

[13] Box G E P, Jenkins G M, Reinsel G C, et al. Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control[M]. 5th ed. Hoboken: Wiley, 2015.

[14] Ding J W, Chuang M J, Tseng J S, et al. Reanalysis and ground station data: Advanced data preprocessing in deep learning for wind power prediction[J]. Applied Energy, 2024, 375: 124129.

[15] Cheng J, Luo X, Jin Z. Integrating domain knowledge into Transformer for short-term wind power forecasting[J]. Energy, 2024, 312: 133511.

[16] Piantadosi G, Dutto S, Galli A, et al. PV power forecasting: A Transformer based framework[J]. Energy and AI, 2024, 18: 100444.

[17] Hussan U, Wang H, Peng J, et al. Transformer-based renewable energy forecasting: A comprehensive review[J]. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2026, 226: 116356.

[18] Hu J, Hu W, Cao D, et al. Probabilistic net load forecasting based on transformer network and Gaussian process-enabled residual modeling learning method[J]. Renewable Energy, 2024, 225: 120253.

[19] Ahmad A, Xiao X, Mo H, et al. TFTformer: A novel transformer based model for short-term load forecasting[J]. International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, 2025, 166: 110549.

[20] Pandžić F, Capuder T. Advances in short-term solar forecasting: A review and benchmark of machine learning methods and relevant data sources[J]. Energies, 2023, 17(1): 97.

[21] Wang Y, Zou R, Liu F, et al. A review of wind speed and wind power forecasting with deep neural networks[J]. Applied Energy, 2021, 304: 117766.

[22] Manandhar P, Rafiq H, Rodriguez-Ubinas E, et al. New forecasting metrics evaluated in Prophet, Random Forest, and Long Short-Term Memory models for load forecasting[J]. Energies, 2024, 17(23): 6131.

[23] Taylor S J, Letham B. Forecasting at scale[J]. The American Statistician, 2018, 72(1): 37-45.

[24] Vaswani A, Shazeer N, Parmar N, et al. Attention is all you need[C]//Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. 2017, 30: 5998-6008.

[25] Wu X, Zhan H, Hu J, et al. Non-stationary GNNCrossformer: Transformer with graph information for non-stationary multivariate spatio-temporal wind power data forecasting[J]. Applied Energy, 2025, 377: 124492.

[26] Vandenhende S, Georgoulis S, Van Gansbeke W, et al. Multi-task learning for dense prediction tasks: A survey[J]. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2022, 44(7): 3614-3633.

[27] Dou X, Wang Y, Zhang H, et al. An adaptive forecasting method for net load ramping demand in power systems[J]. IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution, 2025, 19(1): e70176.

[28] Verdone A, Galletti A, Mazzoni S, et al. A review of solar and wind energy forecasting: From single-site to spatio-temporal deep learning approaches[J]. Applied Energy, 2025, 392: 125843.

[29] Lim B, Zohren S, Roberts S. Time-series forecasting with deep learning: A survey[J]. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 2021, 379(2194): 20200209.

[30] Tao K, Zhang X, Wang Y, et al. Operational day-ahead photovoltaic power forecasting using transformer-based deep learning models[J]. Applied Energy, 2024, 373: 123986.

[31] Liu H, Zhang Z, Wang Y, et al. Probabilistic forecasting of multiple plant day-ahead renewable power generation sequences with data privacy preserving[J]. Energy and AI, 2025, 19: 100463.

[32] Yang T, Yang Z, Li F, et al. A short-term wind power forecasting method based on multivariate signal decomposition and variable selection[J]. Applied Energy, 2024, 360: 122759.

[33] Caruana R. Multi-task learning[J]. Machine Learning, 1997, 28(1): 41-75.

[34] Hyndman R J, Athanasopoulos G. Forecasting: Principles and Practice[M]. 3rd ed. Melbourne: OTexts, 2021.

[35] Zhou H, Zhang S, Peng J, et al. Informer: Beyond efficient Transformer for long sequence time-series forecasting[C]//Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. 2021, 35(12): 11106-11115.

[36] Bashir T, Wang H, Tahir M, et al. Wind and solar power forecasting based on hybrid CNN-ABiLSTM, CNN-transformer-MLP models[J]. Renewable Energy, 2025, 239: 122055.

[37] Lim B, Arık S Ö, Loeff N, et al. Temporal Fusion Transformers for interpretable multi-horizon time series forecasting[J]. International Journal of Forecasting, 2021, 37(4): 1748-1764.

[38] Liu L, Zhang J, Xue S. Photovoltaic power forecasting: Using wavelet threshold denoising combined with VMD[J]. Renewable Energy, 2025, 249: 123152.

[39] Zhai C, Zhang Y, Liu X, et al. Photovoltaic power forecasting based on VMD-SSA-Transformer: Multidimensional analysis of dataset length, weather mutation and forecast accuracy[J]. Energy, 2025, 324: 135971.

[40] Wang B, Chen J, Zhu Y, et al. SP-Transformer: A medium- and long-term photovoltaic power forecasting model integrating multi-source spatiotemporal features[J]. Applied Sciences, 2025, 15(21): 11846.

[41] Wu M, Feng W, Li X, et al. Short-term power load forecasting using an improved model integrating GCN and Transformer[J]. Applied Sciences, 2025, 15(13): 7003.

[42] Lafuente-Cacho M, Martínez S, López G, et al. State of the art for solar and wind energy-forecasting methods for sustainable grid integration[J]. Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 2025, 16: 16432-16467.

[43] Feng W, Deng B, Chen T, et al. Probabilistic net load forecasting based on sparse variational Gaussian process regression[J]. Frontiers in Energy Research, 2024, 12: 1429241.

Downloads

Published

11-08-2026

Issue

Section

AI-Powered Hybrid Energy Storage Optimization for Grid Cost-Efficiency and Stability

How to Cite

1.
Huang M, Wang L, Luo T, Ju C, Guo W, Ning C. An MT-Transformer Framework for Coordinated Wind–Solar–Load Forecasting with Net-Load-Based Coal-Power Regulation Demand Identification. EAI Endorsed Trans Energy Web [Internet]. 2026 Aug. 11 [cited 2026 Aug. 11];13. Available from: https://publications.eai.eu/index.php/ew/article/view/13035