Support vector regression (SVR), with hybrid chaotic sequence and evolutionary algorithms to determine suitable values of its three parameters, not only can effectively avoid converging prematurely (i.e., trapping into a local optimum), but also reveals its superior forecasting performance. Electric load sometimes demonstrates a seasonal (cyclic) tendency due to economic activities or climate cyclic nature. The applications of SVR models to deal with seasonal (cyclic) electric load forecasting have not been widely explored. In addition, the concept of recurrent neural networks (RNNs), focused on using past information to capture detailed information, is helpful to be combined into an SVR model. This investigation presents an electric load forecasting model which combines the seasonal recurrent support vector regression model with chaotic artificial bee colony algorithm (namely SRSVRCABC) to improve the forecasting performance. The proposed SRSVRCABC employs the chaotic behavior of honey bees which is with better performance in function optimization to overcome premature local optimum. A numerical example from an existed reference is used to elucidate the forecasting performance of the proposed SRSVRCABC model. The forecasting results indicate that the proposed model yields more accurate forecasting results than ARIMA and TF-epsilon-SVR-SA models. Therefore, the SRSVRCABC model is a promising alternative for electric load forecasting. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.