A short-term temperature forecaster based on a novel radial basis functions neural network

Many applications dealing with electric load forecasting in buildings require temperature prediction. A new method for short-term temperature forecasting based on a Radial Basis Functions Neural Network, initialized by a Regression Tree, is presented. In this method, each terminal node of the tree contributes one hidden unit to the RBF network. The forecaster uses the current coded hour and the temperature as inputs, and predicts the next hour temperature. The results demonstrate this predictor can be used for load forecasting.