Mathematical and Machine Learning Innovations for Power Systems: Predicting Transformer Oil Temperature with Beluga Whale Optimization-Based Hybrid Neural Networks

Power transformers are vital in power systems, where oil temperature is a key operational indicator. This study proposes an advanced hybrid neural network model, BWO-TCN-BiGRU-Attention, to predict the top-oil temperature of transformers. The model was validated using temperature data from power transformers in two Chinese regions. It achieved MAEs of 0.5258 and 0.9995, MAPEs of 2.75% and 2.73%, and RMSEs of 0.6353 and 1.2158, significantly outperforming mainstream methods like ELM, PSO-SVR, Informer, CNN-BiLSTM-Attention, and CNN-GRU-Attention. In tests conducted in spring, summer, autumn, and winter, the model’s MAPE was 2.75%, 3.44%, 3.93%, and 2.46% for Transformer 1, and 2.73%, 2.78%, 3.07%, and 2.05% for Transformer 2, respectively. These results indicate that the model can maintain low prediction errors even with significant seasonal temperature variations. In terms of time granularity, the model performed well at both 1 h and 15 min intervals: for Transformer 1, MAPE was 2.75% at 1 h granularity and 2.98% at 15 min granularity; for Transformer 2, MAPE was 2.73% at 1 h granularity and further reduced to 2.16% at 15 min granularity. This shows that the model can adapt to different seasons and maintain good prediction performance with high-frequency data, providing reliable technical support for the safe and stable operation of power systems.