Abstract
Energy production from clean sources is mandatory to reduce pollutant emissions. Among different options for hidden hydropower potential exploitation, Pump-as-Turbine (PaT) represents a viable solution in pico- and micro-hydropower applications for its flexibility and low-cost. Pumps are widely available in the global market in terms of both sizes and spare parts. To date, there are several PaTs’ performance prediction models in the literature, but very few of them use optimization algorithms and only for specific and limited prediction goals. The present work proposes evolutionary Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) based on JADE, which is a typology of differential evolution algorithm, to forecast Best Efficiency Point (BEP) and performance curves of a PaT starting from the pump operational data. In this model, JADE is employed as optimizer of basic ANNs to upgrade parameter values of the learning rate, weights, and biases. The accuracy of the proposed model is evaluated through experimental data available from the literature and compared to a basic ANN and two versions of the differential evolution algorithm. Results are also validated with experiments on a PaT showing that the proposed method can achieve an average R2-value of 0.97, which is 5% higher than the one obtained with a basic ANN.