Predicting the electricity consumption of urban rail transit based on binary nonlinear fitting regression and support vector regression.

• The energy consumption of three lines and a station of Guangzhou Metro is revealed. • The prediction of electricity consumption of urban rail transit is conducted. • The performances of the BNFR and SVR models are compared. • The SVR model is superior to the BNFR model in terms of accuracy. Predicting the energy consumption of urban rail transit is conducive to reducing energy consumption in the subway system. Therefore, binary nonlinear fitting regression (BNFR) and support vector regression (SVR) models are developed to predict total electricity, traction electricity, and heating ventilation air conditioning (HVAC) system electricity consumption in subway lines as well as the electricity consumption of chillers in a subway station. The two models are compared in terms of accuracy, and the results demonstrate that the SVR model is superior to the BNFR model. The prediction accuracies of traction electricity and total electricity consumption in subway lines are high. By contrast, the prediction accuracy of the HVAC system electricity consumption in subway lines is low. This is due to numerous factors aside from outdoor temperature, operation mileages, and passenger flow, which can influence the HVAC system electricity. Thus, the influencing factors should further be investigated to increase the prediction accuracy. The electricity consumption of chillers in subway station can be predicted with the comprehensive consideration of indoor and outdoor temperatures and humidity levels, passenger flows, timetable of trains, power of new draught fans, and chilling of strong electricity rooms (SERs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]