Robust Gas Demand Prediction Using Deep Neural Networks: A Data-Driven Approach to Forecasting Under Regulatory Constraints

Accurate gas consumption forecasting is critical for modern energy systems due to complex consumer behaviour and regulatory requirements. Deep neural networks (DNNs), such as Seq2Seq with attention, TiDE, and Temporal Fusion Transformers, are promising for modelling complex temporal relationships and nonlinear dependencies. This study compares state-of-the-art architectures using real-world data from over 100,000 consumers to determine their practical viability for forecasting gas consumption under operational and regulatory conditions. Particular attention is paid to the impact of data quality, feature attribution, and model reliability on performance. The main use cases for natural gas consumption forecasting are tariff setting by regulators and system balancing for suppliers and operators. The study used monthly natural gas consumption data from 105,527 households in the Volyn region of Ukraine from January 2019 to April 2023 and meteorological data on average monthly air temperature. Missing values were replaced with zeros or imputed using seasonal imputation and K-nearest neighbours. The results showed that previous consumption is the dominant feature for all models, confirming their autoregressive origin and the high importance of historical data. Temperature and category were identified as supporting features. Improvised data consistently improved the performance of all models. Seq2SeqPlus showed high accuracy, TiDE was the most stable, and TFT offered flexibility and interpretability. Implementing these models requires careful integration with data management, regulatory frameworks, and operational workflows.