# LightGTS-Cov: Covariate-Enhanced Time Series Forecasting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10412 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10412/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Layer Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.06450/) (2016)
- [Parameter-Efficient Transfer Learning for NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00751/) (2019)
- [A Time Series is Worth 64 Words: Long-term Forecasting with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14730/) (2022)
- [Temporal Fusion Transformers for Interpretable Multi-horizon Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.09363/) (2019)
- [Chronos: Learning the Language of Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07815/) (2024)
- [Unified Training of Universal Time Series Forecasting Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02592/) (2024)
- [MOMENT: A Family of Open Time-series Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03885/) (2024)
- [Long-term Forecasting with TiDE: Time-series Dense Encoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08424/) (2023)
- [Financial Time Series Forecasting with Deep Learning : A Systematic Literature Review: 2005-2019](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.13288/) (2019)
- [TimeXer: Empowering Transformers for Time Series Forecasting with Exogenous Variables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19072/) (2024)
- [Chronos-2: From Univariate to Universal Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15821/) (2025)
- [Sundial: A Family of Highly Capable Time Series Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.00816/) (2025)
- [Forecasting day-ahead electricity prices: A review of state-of-the-art algorithms, best practices and an open-access benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08004/) (2020)
- [Time Series Prediction using Deep Learning Methods in Healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.13461/) (2021)
- [Neural basis expansion analysis with exogenous variables: Forecasting electricity prices with NBEATSx](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05522/) (2021)
- [LightGTS: A Lightweight General Time Series Forecasting Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06005/) (2025)
- [ChronosX: Adapting Pretrained Time Series Models with Exogenous Variables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12107/) (2025)
- [CrossLinear: Plug-and-Play Cross-Correlation Embedding for Time Series Forecasting with Exogenous Variables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23116/) (2025)
- [AdaPTS: Adapting Univariate Foundation Models to Probabilistic Multivariate Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10235/) (2025)
- [UniCA: Unified Covariate Adaptation for Time Series Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22039/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Time series foundation models are typically pre-trained on large, multi-source datasets; however, they often ignore exogenous covariates or incorporate them via simple concatenation with the target series, which limits their effectiveness in covariate-rich applications such as electricity price forecasting and renewable energy forecasting. We introduce LightGTS-Cov, a covariate-enhanced extension of LightGTS that preserves its lightweight, period-aware backbone while explicitly incorporating both past and future-known covariates. Built on a ~1M-parameter LightGTS backbone, LightGTS-Cov adds only a ~0.1M-parameter MLP plug-in that integrates time-aligned covariates into the target forecasts by residually refining the outputs of the decoding process. Across covariate-aware benchmarks on electricity price and energy generation datasets, LightGTS-Cov consistently outperforms LightGTS and achieves superior performance over other covariate-aware baselines under both settings, regardless of whether future-known covariates are provided. We further demonstrate its practical value in two real-world energy case applications: long-term photovoltaic power forecasting with future weather forecasts and day-ahead electricity price forecasting with weather and dispatch-plan covariates. Across both applications, LightGTS-Cov achieves strong forecasting accuracy and stable operational performance after deployment, validating its effectiveness in real-world industrial settings.