Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Electricity is a vital part of our daily life; therefore it is important to avoid irregularities such as the California Electricity Crisis of 2000 and 2001. In this work, we seek to predict anomalies using advanced machine learning algorithms. These algorithms are effective, but computationally expensive, especially if we plan to apply them on hourly electricity market data covering a number of years. To address this challenge, we significantly accelerate the computation of the Gaussian Process (GP) for time series data. In the context of a Change Point Detection (CPD) algorithm, we reduce its computational complexity from O($n^{5}$) to O($n^{2}$). Our efficient algorithm makes it possible to compute the Change Points using the hourly price data from the California Electricity Crisis. By comparing the detected Change Points with known events, we show that the Change Point Detection algorithm is indeed effective in detecting signals preceding major events.