Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

Prerequisites

To run this project you need to have python 3.8 or higher installed on your machine.

First, clone this Repository and initialize the submodules:

git clone --recurse-submodule https://git.rwth-aachen.de/acs/public/automation/plf/proloaf.git

or if you have already cloned the project and you are missing e.g. the open data directory for execution run:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Now you will need to install all packages listed in the requirements.txt file. To install all required packages using pip, run:

pip install -r requirements.txt

On low RAM machines the option

pip install -r requirements.txt --no-cache-dir

might be necessary. Depending on your machine you might need to use pip3 instead of pip.

Running the code

This project contains 3 scripts that can be used in conjunction with one another or separately. Configuration for these scripts is given in a config.json file in the targets/ folder.

• All scripts are located in the source folder.
• To start one of the scripts use ‘Python3 script.py argument’, where the argument is either the name of a station (-s) (e.g. ‘opsd’) or the path (-c) of the corresponding config file located in the model_ folders.
• To prepare load and weather data from selected stations run ./src/preprocess.py
• To train a recurrent neural network model specifically parametrized for the selected station and prepared data run ./src/train.py
• To analyze the performance of the forecast: ./src/evaluate.py

Config

• The scripts use a config.json file located in the targets/ folder. This file is used to give further information and settings needed to train a model.

• In addition, a tuning.json file is used to define settings regarding hyperparameter tuning. This file is only required when using hyperparameter tuning.

• To adapt the behavior of the scripts for a certain station change options in the corresponding config file.

• Parameters can be added to the config file by adding or removing them by hand (standard json format) or using the config_maker.py.

Add a line

par['parameter_name'] = value

in the configmaker.py file and it will be added under that name. Then use

python3 configmaker.py --mod path_to_config

to apply the changes. The argument again is a station name or the already existing config file.

Using

python3 configmaker.py --new path_to_config

Will clear the config file before applying changes so be careful with that.