Hierarchical Method Based on Artificial Neural Networks for Power Output Prediction of a Combined Cycle Power Plant

The increasing demand for electricity the last decades leads towards the more frequent use of Combined Cycle Power Plants (CCPPs) because of the quite efficient way these units are capable to produce electricity. Hence, the prediction of the output of these units is of significant interest and constitutes the cornerstone towards the attainment of economic power production and a reliable power generation system as a whole. To that end, the aim of this paper is the development of a hierarchical predictive method based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) in order to efficiently predict the power plant's output. The under consideration features are the hourly average ambient variables of Temperature (T), Ambient Pressure (AP), Relative Humidity (RH) and Exhaust Vacuum (V) for predicting the hourly power output of a CCPP. A parellel, but equally important, aim of this study is to assess the effectiveness of ANNs in this type of applications.