HyMOTree: Automatic Hyperparameters Tuning for Non-Technical Loss Detection Based on Multi-Objective and Tree-Based Algorithms

The most common methods to detect non-technical losses involve Deep Learning-based classifiers and samples of consumption remotely collected several times a day through Smart Meters (SMs) and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). This approach requires a huge amount of data, and training is computationally expensive. However, most energy meters in emerging countries such as Brazil are technologically limited. These devices can measure only the accumulated energy consumption monthly. This work focuses on detecting energy theft in scenarios without AMI and SM. We propose a strategy called HyMOTree intended for the hyperparameter tuning of tree-based algorithms using different multiobjective optimization strategies. Our main contributions are associating different multiobjective optimization strategies to improve the classifier performance and analyzing the model’s performance given different probability cutoff operations. HyMOTree combines NSGA-II and GDE-3 with Decision Tree, Random Forest, and XGboost. A dataset provided by a Brazilian power distribution company CPFL ENERGIA™ was used, and the SMOTE technique was applied to balance the data. The results show that HyMOTree performed better than the random search method, and then, the combination between Random Forest and NSGA-II achieved 0.95 and 0.93 for Precision and F1-Score, respectively. Field studies showed that inspections guided by HyMOTree achieved an accuracy of 76%.