Forecasting of electricity consumption has become a significant element of utmost necessity of the planning exercise in the power sector, especially in the backdrop of the continuing energy crisis. The present work critically evaluates the electricity demand forecasting methodology available in general and proposes a methodology in the classical time series framework of multi-variate autoregressive-moving average (MARMA) model.

Vijayamohanan Pillai N. is as an Associate Professor at Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Trivandrum, Kerala, India (www.cds.edu). He obtained his PhD in Economics-Econometrics from the University of Madras, India. His research interests are in Energy Economics, Applied Statistics and Development Political Economy.