This document summarizes a study on using artificial neural networks to predict power outages in Nigeria. The study finds that ANN can be used to accurately predict different types of power outages, including forced, planned, urgent and emergency outages. Historical outage data from 2008-2009 was used to train the ANN model. The results showed that the ANN was able to learn the nonlinear relationships in the historical outage data and predict outage periods with a regression value of 0.925. This ability to accurately predict outages could help utilities better plan outages and inform consumers to plan their activities. The study concludes ANN is an effective method for short-term power outage forecasting.
Towards an effective power outage planning ann approach
1. Journal of Energy Technologies and Policy www.iiste.org
ISSN 2224-3232 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0573 (Online)
Vol.4, No.7, 2014
49
Towards An Effective Power Outage Planning: Ann Approach
Adewuyi Philip Adesola 1*
Aborisade David Olugbemiga 2
1. Department of Mechatronics Engineering, Bells University of Technology, Nigeria
2. Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology,
Nigeria
* E-mail of the corresponding author: solaadewuyi@gmail.com
Abstract
Utility companies in developing nations are battling the problem of incessant power outages without giving prior
warning to the consumers. This has caused questions to be raised as touching the integrity of the so called utility
companies. Inability to give precise forecast is another problem that confronts these companies. Most forecast
data are purely statistical which could be enhanced by the use of artificial intelligence tool like Artificial Neural
Network. Outage planning could therefore be well analyzed making both the utility company and consumers
schedule their activities without untold damage to machine, equipment, and minimization of economic losses.
Keywords: utility, outage, predictability, ANN, trainoss
1. Introduction
Developing nations are daily seeking effective ways of bringing stable electricity to their citizenry. Construction
of more power generating stations, spring up all across developing nations without appreciable improvements in
the power available at the consumer end. Several works by researchers have been aimed at forecasting power
generation and load demands [1]. This trend has been ongoing for sometimes now [2]. Countries like South
Africa, Ghana, and Libya have experienced remarkable improvement in terms of stability of power. Nigeria, the
focus of this work, is struggling even in the attainment of MW of power. Recently, the power has dropped
to a disappointing level. Therefore, there is a difficulty in forecasting power that would be generated or available
in the national grid due to factors ranging from gas pipeline vandalisation, unstable operational policy, political
undertone, nepotism and so on.
In the last five years, several companies have closed shops in Nigeria due to severe power outages experienced
which is not good for the survival of any business outfit. For instance, Dunlop PLC closed shop in 2011,
Michelin in 2007 while Unilever PLC, PZ Cussons Nigeria, Afprint Nigeria Limited have considered relocating
to other neighbouring countries that have stable power supply for their productions.
From the above discussions, the place of proper power outage planning cannot be overemphasized. Proper
power outage planning would be helpful to industries, parastatals, small businesses and individuals to plan their
activities ahead without much emergency situations.
Artificial neural network has played a significant role in the forecast and predictability of load demand in power
sector [3, 4, 5]. The backpropagation training algorithm is adopted with “trainoss” being the drive vehicle. This
algorithm is settled for since its implementation is made possible by inherent parallelism in the network
architecture due to repeated use of simple neuron processing element [6]. ANN’s characteristics of learning
information by example, ability to generalize to new inputs, robustness to noisy data that occurs in real world
applications, and fault tolerance make it an important tool to use for this work. The rest of this paper examines
types of outages, outage planning, model of artificial neuron, methodology, results and discussions, and
conclusion.
2. Types of Outages
i. Forced outages
ii. Planned outages
iii. Urgent outages
iv. Emergency outages
2.1 Outage Planning
Utility company in Nigeria requires a comprehensive outage forecast details from all power generating stations
across the country. Downtimes, strictly arisen from equipment breakdown, schedule maintenance periods as
well as grid integrity and security are factors generally considered in forecasting periods of power outages likely
to be experienced in a given year.
The National Control Centre’s data of outages released in 2009 was used in the training of ANN, testing, and
validation of the results generated. Outage planning is therefore a key component in the overall operation of the
utility company.
The transmission lines considered are 330kV line and 132kV line for different types of outages experienced in
2008 and 2009 [7].
2. Journal of Energy Technologies and Policy www.iiste.org
ISSN 2224-3232 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0573 (Online)
Vol.4, No.7, 2014
50
2.2 Model of Artificial Neuron
The most common model of artificial neuron was proposed by McCulloch and Pitts in 1943. The model has
each neuron input, xi, and corresponding weight, wi. An offset or better still, a bias with a constant input of 1
weighted by the value, wo. Output is given as y which is obtained by summing the weighted inputs to the neuron
and passing the result through a non-linear activation function, f [8].
Axon Synapses Dendrites
X1
Body
Axon
X2 .
y
Non-linearity Output
Xn
Inputs Weights 1
Bias
Figure 1: McCulloch-Pitts neuron model
3. Methodology
Backpropagation algorithm is used for this work. This algorithm is derived following the simple gradient
principle with a start point containing a typical weight wpq which is updated as follows:pq
(1)
= the learning rate
is the error function to be minimized.
The implementation is realized with these steps:
1. Initialize the weights to small random values
2. Choose a pattern xk; k=1, 2, ..., n and apply it to the input layer.
3. Propagate the signal forwards through the network using
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
4. Compute the deltas for the output layer
(6)
5. Compute the deltas for the hidden layers by propagating the errors backwards
(7)
6. Use
(8)
(9)
to update all connections.
7. Go back to step 2 and repeat for the next pattern.
W
1
Σ
W
2
W
n
f
wo
3. Journal of Energy Technologies and Policy www.iiste.org
ISSN 2224-3232 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0573 (Online)
Vol.4, No.7, 2014
51
4. Results and Discussions
4.1 Results
Figure 2: Performance training curve
55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95
55
60
65
70
75
80
85
90
95
Targets T
OutputsA,LinearFit:A=(0.86)T+(9.6)
Outputs vs. Targets, R=0.92572
Data Points
Best Linear Fit
A = T
Figure 3: Regression curve of the training parameters
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
60
65
Months
Frequency
330kV Forced Outage Profile for 2009
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 4: 330kV forced outage profile for 2009
4. Journal of Energy Technologies and Policy www.iiste.org
ISSN 2224-3232 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0573 (Online)
Vol.4, No.7, 2014
52
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
Months
Frequency
330kV Forced Outage Profile for 2008
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 5: 330kV forced outage profile for 2008
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
0
5
10
15
20
25
Months
Frequency
330kV planned Outage Profile for 2008
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 6: 330kV planned outage profile for 2008
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Months
Frequency
330kV planned Outage Profile for 2009
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 7: 330kV planned outage profile for 2009
5. Journal of Energy Technologies and Policy www.iiste.org
ISSN 2224-3232 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0573 (Online)
Vol.4, No.7, 2014
53
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
Months
Frequency
330kV Urgent Outage Profile for 2009
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 8: 330kV urgent outage profile for 2009
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Months
Frequency
330kV Urgent Outage Profile for 2008
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 9: 330kV urgent outage profile for 2008
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Months
Frequency
330kV Emergency Outage Profile for 2009
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 10: 330kV emergency outage profile for 2009
6. Journal of Energy Technologies and Policy www.iiste.org
ISSN 2224-3232 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0573 (Online)
Vol.4, No.7, 2014
54
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Months
Frequency
330kV Emergency Outage Profile for 2008
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 11: 330kV emergency outage profile for 2008
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
110
Months
Frequency
132kV Forced Outage Profile for 2009
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 12: 132kV forced outage profile for 2009
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
110
120
Months
Frequency
132kV Forced Outage Profile for 2008
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 13: 132kV forced outage profile for 2008
7. Journal of Energy Technologies and Policy www.iiste.org
ISSN 2224-3232 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0573 (Online)
Vol.4, No.7, 2014
55
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Months
Frequency
132kV Planned Outage Profile for 2009
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 14: 132kV planned outage profile for 2009
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
Months
Frequency
132kV Planned Outage Profile for 2008
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 15: 132kV planned outage profile for 2008
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
Months
Frequency
132kV Urgent Outage Profile for 2009
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 16: 132kV urgent outage profile for 2009
8. Journal of Energy Technologies and Policy www.iiste.org
ISSN 2224-3232 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0573 (Online)
Vol.4, No.7, 2014
56
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
15
20
25
30
35
40
Months
Frequency
132kV Urgent Outage Profile for 2008
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 17: 132kV urgent outage profile for 2008
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
Months
Frequency
132kV Emergency Outage Profile for 2009
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 18: 132kV emergency outage profile for 2009
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
Months
Frequency
132kV Emergency Outage Profile for 2008
Actual
ANN
Target
Figure 19: 132kV emergency outage profile for 2008
9. Journal of Energy Technologies and Policy www.iiste.org
ISSN 2224-3232 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0573 (Online)
Vol.4, No.7, 2014
57
4.2 Discussion
The results obtained for the outage periods shows that ANN could be used to predict the power outage periods in
the country as attested to by the regression curve value of 0.9 obtained. This would enable adequate plans to be
made and the consumers should be provided with such data in order to plan their activities.
The training performance goal is met with one of the fastest training algorithms other than the ‘trainlm’, that is,
‘trainoss’ as shown on the matlab window below:
TRAINOSS-srchbac-calcgrad, Epoch 0/300, MSE 1.76984/0.001, Gradient 5.33559/1e-006
TRAINOSS-srchbac-calcgrad, Epoch 21/300, MSE 0.000936266/0.001, Gradient 0.0469698/1e-006
TRAINOSS, Performance goal met.
The “trainoss” stands for one step secant (OSS) method and is an attempt to bridge the gap between the
conjugate gradient algorithms and the quasi-Newton (secant) algorithms. This algorithm does not store the
complete Hessian matrix. It assumes that at each iteration the previous Hessian was the identity matrix. This has
the additional advantage that the new search direction can be calculated without computing a matrix inverse. It
therefore requires less storage space and computational time.
5. Conclusion
Power outage forecasting helps to evaluate grid system outage times and serve in some way to represent or show
the pattern of the present and future grid downtime. It also enhances adequate planning on both consumer side as
well as the supply authority side. Furthermore, improvement as regards ways to lessen outage periods of
whatever type could be fashioned since research activities would have shown the causes of such outages before
they occur. The result obtained from this research work shows the efficiency of neural network and the accuracy
of short term method to forecast outage periods. The Network was able to determine the nonlinear relationships
that exist between the historical outages experienced that is presented to it during training phase.
References
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[7] Annual Technical Report on Generation and Transmission Grid Operations 2009 by Power Holding
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