*3.4. Electric Rates*

Because one of the operational goals of the smart grid is to reduce electric charges, many STLF studies have used electric rate information as one of the input variables [43]. Thus, we also consider information on electric rates as input variables [44]. In South Korea, three different sections are used by Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) for electric rate: off-peak, mid-peak, and on-peak loads [45]. Electric rates are determined by the amount of electric energy consumption, the intended use of the building (i.e., residential, general, educational, industrial, etc.) and the season or month. As in the day of the week and holiday data, one-hot encoding method is used to represent the electric rate information. Hence, depending on the time and rate section, the input variable is set to 1; otherwise, it is set to zero.
