Modelling energy performance using a new hybrid DE/MARS–based approach for fossil-fuel thermal power stations

Despite their environmental impact, fossil-fuel power plants are still commonly used due to their high capacity and relatively low cost compared to renewable energy sources. The aim of this paper is to assess the performance of such energy systems as a key element within a fossil-fuel energy supply network. The methodology relies on fossil-fuel power plant modelling to define an optimal energy management level. However, it can be difficult to model the energy management of thermal power stations (TPS). Therefore, this paper shows an energy efficiency model found on a new hybrid algorithm that is a combination of multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) and differential evolution (DE) to estimate net annual electricity generation (NAEG) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (CDE) from economic and performance variables in thermal power plants. This technique requires the DE optimisation of the MARS hyperparameters during the development of the training process. In addition to successfully forecast net annual electricity generation (NAEG) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (CDE) (coefficients of determination with a value of 0.9803 and 0.9895, respectively), the mathematical model used in this work can determine the importance of each economic and energy parameter to characterize the behaviour of thermal power stations.