AI-Based Demand Forecasting and Load Balancing for Optimising Energy use in Healthcare Systems: A real case study

- This paper addresses the critical need for efficient energy management in healthcare facilities, where fluctuating energy demands challenge both operational and sustainability goals. Traditional energy management methods often fall short in healthcare settings, lead ing to inefficiencies and increased costs. To address this, the paper explores AI - driven approaches for demand forecasting and load balancing, introducing a novel integration of LSTM (Long Short - Term Memory), g enetic a lgorithm, and SHAP (Shapley Additive E xplanations) specifically tailored for healthcare energy management. While LSTM has been widely used for time - series forecasting, its application in healthcare energy demand prediction is underexplored. Here, LSTM is demonstrated to significantly outperfor m ARIMA and Prophet models in handling complex, non - linear demand patterns. Results show that LSTM achieved a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 21.69 and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 29.96, significantly improving upon Prophet (MAE: 59.78, RMSE: 81.22) and ARIMA (MAE: 87.73, RMSE: 125.22), highlighting its superior forecasting capability. Genetic algorithm is employed not only for optimising forecasting model parameters but also for dynamically improving load balancing strategies, ensuring adaptability to real - time energy fluctuations. Additionally, SHAP analysis is used to interpret the models and understan d the impact of various input features on predictions, enhancing model transparency and trustworthiness in energy decision - making. The combined LSTM - GA - SH AP approach offers a comprehensive framework that improves forecasting accuracy, enhances energy efficiency, and supports sustainability in healthcare environments. Future work could focus on real - time implementation and further hybridisation with reinforc ement learning for continuous optimisation. This study establishes a strong foundation for leveraging AI in healthcare energy management, showcasing its potential for scalability, efficiency, and resilience. Introduction Australia has a big capacity of using renewable energy in different regions ( Holloway, R, 2023; Rahimi et al., 2025) . Australian healthcare system plays a major role in using renewable energies. Optimising energy use in healthcare systems is essential due to the high and often unpredictable energy demands needed to run medical equipment, keep environmental conditions stable, and support constant patient care.