Load profile forecasting (i.e., the forecasting of series of hourly loads) has been often attempted by means of models based on neural networks. However, the papers that propose such models are not considered entirely convincing, for at least two reasons. First, the models they propose are usually based on neural networks that seem to be too large in relation to the sample they intend to model (that is, the networks seem to overfit their data). Secondly, most of the models are not properly validated, since the papers do not compare their performances to that of any standard forecasting method. In this thesis, we examine these two points, by means of literature reviews and of simulations, in order to investigate the feasibility of the application of neural networks to the problem of profile forecasting. We build some very complex models based on neural networks, and validate them empirically by comparing their predictive performance out-of-sample, over actual data, to the performance of several other forecasting methods. The results show that neural networks, even when very complex, are able to forecast profiles more accurately than the traditional models, which suggests that they may yet bring large contributions to the solution of the load forecasting problem.