Aiming at the low accuracy problem of power system short-term load forecasting by traditional methods, a back-propagation artificial neural network (BP-ANN) based method for short-term load forecasting is presented in this paper. The forecast points are related to prophase adjacent data as well as the periodical long-term historical load data. Then the short-term load forecasting model of Shanxi Power Grid (China) based on BP-ANN method and correlation analysis is established. The simulation model matches well with practical power system load, indicating the BP-ANN method is simple and with higher precision and practicality.