A Curve Fitting Modelling Approach to Forecast Long-Term Electrical Energy Consumption: Case Study of Turkey

Abstract

For Turkey to achieve the targets of Vision 2023 of being in the top ten economies of the world, the eleventh National Development Plan (NDP11) focuses on ensuring uninterrupted, high-quality, sustainable, reliable and affordable energy supply. In this regard medium- and long-term energy supply-demand planning is regarded as a key input to the planning process. Medium and long-term planning is possible only when reliable forecasts are available. Using Turkey’s electrical energy consumption data from 1970 to 2015, this study presents novel Gaussian, Fourier and Exponential curve fitting and extrapolation approaches to forecast Turkey’s electrical energy consumption up to the year 2025. Major interest is put on how the model forecasts electrical energy consumption for year 2023 because this year marks a century of the establishment of the Republic of Turkey and all strategic plans are focused on how to achieve the targets as outline in Vision 2023. We evaluate the performance of the models on how best they forecast electrical energy consumption for the year 2023. Our forecasts for the year 2023 are 352.7TWh, 377.4 TWh, and 460.1TWh for the Gaussian, Fourier and Exponential models respectively which compare well with NDP11’s estimated 375.8 TWh electrical energy consumption in 2023.