Asynchronous federated learning with partial weights aggregation for energy consumption forecasting

Abstract

Accurate energy forecasting is essential for grid stability, demand-side management, and efficient renewable integration. However, energy consumption data collected from smart meters may expose sensitive user information, thus raising privacy concerns. Federated Learning (FL) offers a privacy-preserving mechanism for collaborative model training without sharing raw data. However, conventional synchronous FL suffers from training delays caused by heterogeneous client availability and computational capabilities, while frequent exchange of model parameters can lead to communication overheads. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an asynchronous federated learning framework for energy forecasting that enables continuous global model updating without waiting for all clients to complete local training. We introduce a federated asynchronous adaptive aggregation mechanism, where client-specific learning rates are dynamically adjusted based on both update staleness and model performance contribution. A partial aggregation strategy is defined for a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) forecasting model that splits the local models’ layers, allowing clients to exchange only a subset of the weights with the server. The proposed solution is evaluated using real-world energy consumption data from multiple consumers. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed asynchronous adaptive strategy outperforms the classic FedAvg approach and maintains prediction accuracy relative to personalised FedAvg, while reducing communication costs. Additionally, the proposed method outperforms the classic FedAsync algorithm across all client groups, with statistically significant improvements in most cases.