Evaluation of Short-Term Load Forecasting Techniques Applied for Smart Micro Grids

Load Forecasting plays a key role in making today's and future's Smart Energy Grids sustainable and reliable. Accurate power consumption prediction allows utilities to organize in advance their resources or to execute Demand Response strategies more effectively, which enables several features such as higher sustainability, better quality of service, and affordable electricity tariffs. It is easy yet effective to apply Load Forecasting at larger geographic scale, i.e. Smart Micro Grids, wherein the lower available grid flexibility makes accurate prediction more critical in Demand Response applications. This paper analyses the application of short-term load forecasting in a concrete scenario, proposed within the EU-funded GreenCom project, which collect load data from single loads and households belonging to a Smart Micro Grid. Three short-term load forecasting techniques, i.e. linear regression, artificial neural networks, and radial basis function network, are considered, compared, and evaluated through absolute forecast errors and training time. The influence of weather conditions in Load Forecasting is also evaluated. A new definition of Gain is introduced in this paper, which innovatively serves as an indicator of short-term prediction capabilities of time spam consistency. Two models, 24- and 1-hour-ahead forecasting, are built to comprehensively compare these three techniques.

Application of Adaptive Neural Network Algorithms for Determination of Salt Composition of Waters Using Laser Spectroscopy

In this study, a comparative analysis of the approaches associated with the use of neural network algorithms for effective solution of a complex inverse problem – the problem of identifying and determining the individual concentrations of inorganic salts in multicomponent aqueous solutions by the spectra of Raman scattering of light – is performed. It is shown that application of artificial neural networks provides the average accuracy of determination of concentration of each salt no worse than 0.025 M. The results of comparative analysis of input data compression methods are presented. It is demonstrated that use of uniform aggregation of input features allows decreasing the error of determination of individual concentrations of components by 16-18% on the average.

Using Artificial Neural Networks for Optical Imaging of Fluorescent Biomarkers

The article presents the results of the application of artificial neural networks to separate the fluorescent contribution of nanodiamonds used as biomarkers, adsorbents and carriers of drugs in biomedicine, from a fluorescent background of own biological fluorophores. The principal possibility of solving this problem is shown. Use of neural network architecture let to detect fluorescence of nanodiamonds against the background autofluorescence of egg white with high accuracy - better than 3 ug/ml.

Modeling and Analysis of Concrete Slump Using Hybrid Artificial Neural Networks

Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) trained using backpropagation (BP) algorithm are commonly used for modeling material behavior associated with non-linear, complex or unknown interactions among the material constituents. Despite multidisciplinary applications of back-propagation neural networks (BPNN), the BP algorithm possesses the inherent drawback of getting trapped in local minima and slowly converging to a global optimum. The paper present a hybrid artificial neural networks and genetic algorithm approach for modeling slump of ready mix concrete based on its design mix constituents. Genetic algorithms (GA) global search is employed for evolving the initial weights and biases for training of neural networks, which are further fine tuned using the BP algorithm. The study showed that, hybrid ANN-GA model provided consistent predictions in comparison to commonly used BPNN model. In comparison to BPNN model, the hybrid ANNGA model was able to reach the desired performance goal quickly. Apart from the modeling slump of ready mix concrete, the synaptic weights of neural networks were harnessed for analyzing the relative importance of concrete design mix constituents on the slump value. The sand and water constituents of the concrete design mix were found to exhibit maximum importance on the concrete slump value.

Phytopathology Prediction in Dry Soil Using Artificial Neural Networks Modeling

The rapid expansion of deserts in recent decades as a result of human actions combined with climatic changes has highlighted the necessity to understand biological processes in arid environments. Whereas physical processes and the biology of flora and fauna have been relatively well studied in marginally used arid areas, knowledge of desert soil micro-organisms remains fragmentary. The objective of this study is to conduct a diversity analysis of bacterial communities in unvegetated arid soils. Several biological phenomena in hot deserts related to microbial populations and the potential use of micro-organisms for restoring hot desert environments. Dry land ecosystems have a highly heterogeneous distribution of resources, with greater nutrient concentrations and microbial densities occurring in vegetated than in bare soils. In this work, we found it useful to use techniques of artificial intelligence in their treatment especially artificial neural networks (ANN). The use of the ANN model, demonstrate his capability for addressing the complex problems of uncertainty data.

Two Day Ahead Short Term Load Forecasting Neural Network Based

This paper presents an Artificial Neural Network based approach for short-term load forecasting and exactly for two days ahead. Two seasons have been discussed for Iraqi power system, namely summer and winter; the hourly load demand is the most important input variables for ANN based load forecasting. The recorded daily load profile with a lead time of 1-48 hours for July and December of the year 2012 was obtained from the operation and control center that belongs to the Ministry of Iraqi electricity. The results of the comparison show that the neural network gives a good prediction for the load forecasting and for two days ahead.

Optimizing Operation of Photovoltaic System Using Neural Network and Fuzzy Logic

It is well known that photovoltaic (PV) cells are an attractive source of energy. Abundant and ubiquitous, this source is one of the important renewable energy sources that have been increasing worldwide year by year. However, in the V-P characteristic curve of GPV, there is a maximum point called the maximum power point (MPP) which depends closely on the variation of atmospheric conditions and the rotation of the earth. In fact, such characteristics outputs are nonlinear and change with variations of temperature and irradiation, so we need a controller named maximum power point tracker MPPT to extract the maximum power at the terminals of photovoltaic generator. In this context, the authors propose here to study the modeling of a photovoltaic system and to find an appropriate method for optimizing the operation of the PV generator using two intelligent controllers respectively to track this point. The first one is based on artificial neural networks and the second on fuzzy logic. After the conception and the integration of each controller in the global process, the performances are examined and compared through a series of simulation. These two controller have prove by their results good tracking of the MPPT compare with the other method which are proposed up to now.

Diagnosis of the Heart Rhythm Disorders by Using Hybrid Classifiers

In this study, it was tried to identify some heart rhythm disorders by electrocardiography (ECG) data that is taken from MIT-BIH arrhythmia database by subtracting the required features, presenting to artificial neural networks (ANN), artificial immune systems (AIS), artificial neural network based on artificial immune system (AIS-ANN) and particle swarm optimization based artificial neural network (PSO-NN) classifier systems. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of hybrid AIS-ANN and PSO-ANN classifiers with regard to the ANN and AIS. For this purpose, the normal sinus rhythm (NSR), atrial premature contraction (APC), sinus arrhythmia (SA), ventricular trigeminy (VTI), ventricular tachycardia (VTK) and atrial fibrillation (AF) data for each of the RR intervals were found. Then these data in the form of pairs (NSR-APC, NSR-SA, NSR-VTI, NSR-VTK and NSR-AF) is created by combining discrete wavelet transform which is applied to each of these two groups of data and two different data sets with 9 and 27 features were obtained from each of them after data reduction. Afterwards, the data randomly was firstly mixed within themselves, and then 4-fold cross validation method was applied to create the training and testing data. The training and testing accuracy rates and training time are compared with each other. As a result, performances of the hybrid classification systems, AIS-ANN and PSO-ANN were seen to be close to the performance of the ANN system. Also, the results of the hybrid systems were much better than AIS, too. However, ANN had much shorter period of training time than other systems. In terms of training times, ANN was followed by PSO-ANN, AIS-ANN and AIS systems respectively. Also, the features that extracted from the data affected the classification results significantly.

Artificial Intelligent Approach for Machining Titanium Alloy in a Nonconventional Process

Artificial neural networks (ANN) are used in distinct researching fields and professions, and are prepared by cooperation of scientists in different fields such as computer engineering, electronic, structure, biology and so many different branches of science. Many models are built correlating the parameters and the outputs in electrical discharge machining (EDM) concern for different types of materials. Up till now model for Ti-5Al-2.5Sn alloy in the case of electrical discharge machining performance characteristics has not been developed. Therefore, in the present work, it is attempted to generate a model of material removal rate (MRR) for Ti-5Al-2.5Sn material by means of Artificial Neural Network. The experimentation is performed according to the design of experiment (DOE) of response surface methodology (RSM). To generate the DOE four parameters such as peak current, pulse on time, pulse off time and servo voltage and one output as MRR are considered. Ti-5Al-2.5Sn alloy is machined with positive polarity of copper electrode. Finally the developed model is tested with confirmation test. The confirmation test yields an error as within the agreeable limit. To investigate the effect of the parameters on performance sensitivity analysis is also carried out which reveals that the peak current having more effect on EDM performance.

Compressive Strength Evaluation of Underwater Concrete Structures Integrating the Combination of Rebound Hardness and Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity Methods with Artificial Neural Networks

In this study, two kinds of nondestructive evaluation  (NDE) techniques (rebound hardness and ultrasonic pulse velocity  methods) are investigated for the effective maintenance of underwater  concrete structures. A new methodology to estimate the underwater  concrete strengths more effectively, named “artificial neural network  (ANN) – based concrete strength estimation with the combination of  rebound hardness and ultrasonic pulse velocity methods” is proposed  and verified throughout a series of experimental works.  

Modeling and Prediction of Zinc Extraction Efficiency from Concentrate by Operating Condition and Using Artificial Neural Networks

PH, temperature and time of extraction of each stage,  agitation speed and delay time between stages effect on efficiency of  zinc extraction from concentrate. In this research, efficiency of zinc  extraction was predicted as a function of mentioned variable by  artificial neural networks (ANN). ANN with different layer was  employed and the result show that the networks with 8 neurons in  hidden layer has good agreement with experimental data.  

Study of a Crude Oil Desalting Plant of the National Iranian South Oil Company in Gachsaran by Using Artificial Neural Networks

Desalting/dehydration plants (DDP) are often installed in crude oil production units in order to remove water-soluble salts from an oil stream. In order to optimize this process, desalting unit should be modeled. In this research, artificial neural network is used to model efficiency of desalting unit as a function of input parameter. The result of this research shows that the mentioned model has good agreement with experimental data.

Evaluating Performance of an Anomaly Detection Module with Artificial Neural Network Implementation

Anomaly detection techniques have been focused on two main components: data extraction and selection and the second one is the analysis performed over the obtained data. The goal of this paper is to analyze the influence that each of these components has over the system performance by evaluating detection over network scenarios with different setups. The independent variables are as follows: the number of system inputs, the way the inputs are codified and the complexity of the analysis techniques. For the analysis, some approaches of artificial neural networks are implemented with different number of layers. The obtained results show the influence that each of these variables has in the system performance.

Recommender Systems Using Ensemble Techniques

This study proposes a novel recommender system that uses data mining and multi-model ensemble techniques to enhance the recommendation performance through reflecting the precise user’s preference. The proposed model consists of two steps. In the first step, this study uses logistic regression, decision trees, and artificial neural networks to predict customers who have high likelihood to purchase products in each product group. Then, this study combines the results of each predictor using the multi-model ensemble techniques such as bagging and bumping. In the second step, this study uses the market basket analysis to extract association rules for co-purchased products. Finally, the system selects customers who have high likelihood to purchase products in each product group and recommends proper products from same or different product groups to them through above two steps. We test the usability of the proposed system by using prototype and real-world transaction and profile data. In addition, we survey about user satisfaction for the recommended product list from the proposed system and the randomly selected product lists. The results also show that the proposed system may be useful in real-world online shopping store.

An Efficient Technique for Extracting Fuzzy Rulesfrom Neural Networks

Artificial neural networks (ANN) have the ability to model input-output relationships from processing raw data. This characteristic makes them invaluable in industry domains where such knowledge is scarce at best. In the recent decades, in order to overcome the black-box characteristic of ANNs, researchers have attempted to extract the knowledge embedded within ANNs in the form of rules that can be used in inference systems. This paper presents a new technique that is able to extract a small set of rules from a two-layer ANN. The extracted rules yield high classification accuracy when implemented within a fuzzy inference system. The technique targets industry domains that possess less complex problems for which no expert knowledge exists and for which a simpler solution is preferred to a complex one. The proposed technique is more efficient, simple, and applicable than most of the previously proposed techniques.

A Novel Approach to Fault Classification and Fault Location for Medium Voltage Cables Based on Artificial Neural Network

A novel application of neural network approach to fault classification and fault location of Medium voltage cables is demonstrated in this paper. Different faults on a protected cable should be classified and located correctly. This paper presents the use of neural networks as a pattern classifier algorithm to perform these tasks. The proposed scheme is insensitive to variation of different parameters such as fault type, fault resistance, and fault inception angle. Studies show that the proposed technique is able to offer high accuracy in both of the fault classification and fault location tasks.

Analysis and Classification of Hiv-1 Sub- Type Viruses by AR Model through Artificial Neural Networks

HIV-1 genome is highly heterogeneous. Due to this variation, features of HIV-I genome is in a wide range. For this reason, the ability to infection of the virus changes depending on different chemokine receptors. From this point of view, R5 HIV viruses use CCR5 coreceptor while X4 viruses use CXCR5 and R5X4 viruses can utilize both coreceptors. Recently, in Bioinformatics, R5X4 viruses have been studied to classify by using the experiments on HIV-1 genome. In this study, R5X4 type of HIV viruses were classified using Auto Regressive (AR) model through Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). The statistical data of R5X4, R5 and X4 viruses was analyzed by using signal processing methods and ANNs. Accessible residues of these virus sequences were obtained and modeled by AR model since the dimension of residues is large and different from each other. Finally the pre-processed data was used to evolve various ANN structures for determining R5X4 viruses. Furthermore ROC analysis was applied to ANNs to show their real performances. The results indicate that R5X4 viruses successfully classified with high sensitivity and specificity values training and testing ROC analysis for RBF, which gives the best performance among ANN structures.

Exploiting Two Intelligent Models to Predict Water Level: A Field Study of Urmia Lake, Iran

Water level forecasting using records of past time series is of importance in water resources engineering and management. For example, water level affects groundwater tables in low-lying coastal areas, as well as hydrological regimes of some coastal rivers. Then, a reliable prediction of sea-level variations is required in coastal engineering and hydrologic studies. During the past two decades, the approaches based on the Genetic Programming (GP) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) were developed. In the present study, the GP is used to forecast daily water level variations for a set of time intervals using observed water levels. The measurements from a single tide gauge at Urmia Lake, Northwest Iran, were used to train and validate the GP approach for the period from January 1997 to July 2008. Statistics, the root mean square error and correlation coefficient, are used to verify model by comparing with a corresponding outputs from Artificial Neural Network model. The results show that both these artificial intelligence methodologies are satisfactory and can be considered as alternatives to the conventional harmonic analysis.

Modelling of Energy Consumption in Wheat Production Using Neural Networks “Case Study in Canterbury Province, New Zealand“

An artificial neural network (ANN) approach was used to model the energy consumption of wheat production. This study was conducted over 35,300 hectares of irrigated and dry land wheat fields in Canterbury in the 2007-2008 harvest year.1 In this study several direct and indirect factors have been used to create an artificial neural networks model to predict energy use in wheat production. The final model can predict energy consumption by using farm condition (size of wheat area and number paddocks), farmers- social properties (education), and energy inputs (N and P use, fungicide consumption, seed consumption, and irrigation frequency), it can also predict energy use in Canterbury wheat farms with error margin of ±7% (± 1600 MJ/ha).

A Novel Fuzzy-Neural Based Medical Diagnosis System

In this paper, application of artificial neural networks in typical disease diagnosis has been investigated. The real procedure of medical diagnosis which usually is employed by physicians was analyzed and converted to a machine implementable format. Then after selecting some symptoms of eight different diseases, a data set contains the information of a few hundreds cases was configured and applied to a MLP neural network. The results of the experiments and also the advantages of using a fuzzy approach were discussed as well. Outcomes suggest the role of effective symptoms selection and the advantages of data fuzzificaton on a neural networks-based automatic medical diagnosis system.