Considerable work has been carried out in recent years on problems concerned with load-flow analysis, economic generation scheduling and system-security checking in electrical power systems. An aspect of the overall problem which has not received much attention is that of forecasting electrical load demand. It is, however, important from the practical point of view of economic generation scheduling and security checking to be able to predict accurately load demand several hours in advance. Methods of prediction fall into two basic categories: those which use weather forecasts and meteorological information, and those which use past load data only. In the paper, the various methods which are commonly used for short-term prediction are described and their relative merits are discussed.