TY - EJOU AU - Peng, Li-Ling AU - Li, Tong AU - Fan, Guo-Feng AU - Yang, Xin-Yu AU - Hong, Wei-Chiang TI - Short-Term Electric Load Forecasting by Cross-Feature Analysis and Multimodal Selection T2 - Computer Modeling in Engineering \& Sciences PY - VL - IS - SN - 1526-1506 AB - Accurate load forecasting has become a critical foundation for ensuring the stable operation of power systems, optimizing generation scheduling, and supporting the efficient functioning of electricity markets. In this paper, the cross-scale and meso-scale characteristics of the complexity of power loads are analyzed, and the meteorological factors, the impact of the emergence law, and the uncertainty are also considered simultaneously. The short-term coupled forecasting model of power loads based on AI technology is proposed. Firstly, the cross-scale and meso-scale characteristics of short-term power loads are explored, and the nonlinear effects between different scales are analyzed in terms of peaks and valleys. Secondly, the modal decomposition method with the Aquila optimizer algorithm is employed to perform stable decomposition and key feature extraction on the strongly nonlinear load sequence. Subsequently, the Gated Recurrent Unit is used to capture the inherent temporal dynamics and nonlinear evolution patterns in the load data. At the same time, the Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory neural network model optimized by the Coati optimization algorithm is introduced to achieve the deep integration of meteorological features and load data, effectively handling coupled nonlinear and random uncertainties. Finally, the results for the two types of data are reconstructed. Experimental results show that the proposed model can effectively handle various nonlinear problems. The model demonstrates high accuracy and robustness across different time scales and is helpful for the power industry to better cope with power market fluctuations and changes. KW - Cross-scale; mesoscale; short-term power load; meteorological characteristics; nonlinear effects DO - 10.32604/cmes.2026.087031