Differential evolution-based optimized hierarchical extreme learning machines for fault section diagnosis of large-scale power systems

Fault section diagnosis (FSD) is extremely critical to ensure the safe and stable operation of power systems. Neural networks have become popular increasingly in solving this problem and the existing applied ones rely primarily on the traditional BP and RBF neural networks. However, their generalization is weak when diagnosing large-scale power systems. To address this issue, this study suggests a divisional FSD method based on structure adaptive hierarchical extreme learning machines (HELM). To construct an optimal HELM-based sub-module diagnosis model for each subsystem of a large-scale power system, differential evolution is applied to optimize both the number of hidden layer neurons and the regularization factor of HELM simultaneously. The optimal HELM is responsible for completing both the diagnosis of internal power sections of the subsystem and the interim diagnosis of tie lines of adjacent subsystems. Based on the interim diagnosis results, Choquet fuzzy integral is used to fuse them to obtain the final results for the tie lines. Simulation results indicate that the differential evolution algorithm is effective in finding more accurate and compact HELMs with better approximation ability and generalization performance. The proposed FSD method has higher accuracy and fault tolerance to identify various complex fault cases.