DemandCast: Global hourly electricity demand forecasting

This paper presents a machine learning framework for electricity demand forecasting across diverse geographical regions using the gradient boosting algorithm XGBoost. The model integrates historical electricity demand and comprehensive weather and socioeconomic variables to predict normalized electricity demand profiles. To enable robust training and evaluation, we developed a large-scale dataset spanning multiple years and countries, applying a temporal data-splitting strategy that ensures benchmarking of out-of-sample performance. Our approach delivers accurate and scalable demand forecasts, providing valuable insights for energy system planners and policymakers as they navigate the challenges of the global energy transition.