paper
arXiv cs.AI
November 11th, 2026 at 5:00 AM

GraphToolbox: A Configurable Framework for Controlled Benchmarking of Graph Neural Network Forecasting

arXiv:2609.24609v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Electricity forecasting often involves spatially related signals observed over regions, substations, and feeders, and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) represent these relations through a graph. Building a complete GNN forecasting experiment is nonetheless laborious, because graph construction, model selection, training, aggregation, and interpretation often require separate tools. We present GraphToolbox, an open-source Python framework that unifies these stages in one configuration-driven pipeline built on PyTorch Geometric. It offers data-driven graph construction, a single interface for most graph convolution operators of PyTorch Geometric and for recurrent graph cells, online expert aggregation, forecasting interpretability, and significance testing on forecasts. We use GraphToolbox to run a controlled benchmark: we compare architectural and modeling choices for French electricity load and net-load forecasting at regional and national levels under a common experimental protocol. On load, most evaluated graph convolutions outperform additive, recurrent, and foundation-model baselines. Pooled XGBoost, trained on the same inputs, has a lower RMSE than the best graph models, although the difference is not significant. Online expert aggregation and daily model updates improve accuracy further. On net-load, graph models outperform additive, recurrent, and XGBoost baselines, with further gains from forecasting the physical components separately. Statistical tests do not identify a single best convolution for load forecasting.

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Canonical link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.24609