Forecasting of global horizontal irradiance by exponential smoothing, using decompositions

Time series methods are frequently used in solar irradiance forecasting when two dimensional cloud information provided by satellite or sky camera is unavailable. ETS (exponential smoothing) has received extensive attention in the recent years since the invention of its state space formulation. In this work, we combine these models with knowledge based heuristic time series decomposition methods to improve the forecasting accuracy and computational efficiency.<p></p> In particular, three decomposition methods are proposed. The first method implements an additive seasonal-trend decomposition as a preprocessing technique prior to ETS. This can reduce the state space thus improve the computational efficiency. The second method decomposes the GHI (global horizontal irradiance) time series into a direct component and a diffuse component. These two components are used as forecasting model inputs separately; and their corresponding results are recombined via the closure equation to obtain the GHI forecasts. In the third method, the time series of the cloud cover index is considered. ETS is applied to the cloud cover time series to obtain the cloud cover forecast thus the forecast GHI through polynomial regressions. The results show that the third method performs the best among three methods and all proposed methods outperform the persistence models.<p></p&gt

An Integrated Multi-Time-Scale Modeling for Solar Irradiance Forecasting Using Deep Learning

For short-term solar irradiance forecasting, the traditional point forecasting methods are rendered less useful due to the non-stationary characteristic of solar power. The amount of operating reserves required to maintain reliable operation of the electric grid rises due to the variability of solar energy. The higher the uncertainty in the generation, the greater the operating-reserve requirements, which translates to an increased cost of operation. In this research work, we propose a unified architecture for multi-time-scale predictions for intra-day solar irradiance forecasting using recurrent neural networks (RNN) and long-short-term memory networks (LSTMs). This paper also lays out a framework for extending this modeling approach to intra-hour forecasting horizons thus, making it a multi-time-horizon forecasting approach, capable of predicting intra-hour as well as intra-day solar irradiance. We develop an end-to-end pipeline to effectuate the proposed architecture. The performance of the prediction model is tested and validated by the methodical implementation. The robustness of the approach is demonstrated with case studies conducted for geographically scattered sites across the United States. The predictions demonstrate that our proposed unified architecture-based approach is effective for multi-time-scale solar forecasts and achieves a lower root-mean-square prediction error when benchmarked against the best-performing methods documented in the literature that use separate models for each time-scale during the day. Our proposed method results in a 71.5% reduction in the mean RMSE averaged across all the test sites compared to the ML-based best-performing method reported in the literature. Additionally, the proposed method enables multi-time-horizon forecasts with real-time inputs, which have a significant potential for practical industry applications in the evolving grid.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables, under review for journal submissio

Cloud Radiative Effect Study Using Sky Camera

The analysis of clouds in the earth's atmosphere is important for a variety of applications, viz. weather reporting, climate forecasting, and solar energy generation. In this paper, we focus our attention on the impact of cloud on the total solar irradiance reaching the earth's surface. We use weather station to record the total solar irradiance. Moreover, we employ collocated ground-based sky camera to automatically compute the instantaneous cloud coverage. We analyze the relationship between measured solar irradiance and computed cloud coverage value, and conclude that higher cloud coverage greatly impacts the total solar irradiance. Such studies will immensely help in solar energy generation and forecasting.Comment: Accepted in Proc. IEEE AP-S Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting, 201