Solar Power Forecasting

Abstract

Solar energy is a promising environmentally-friendly energy source. Yet its variability affects negatively the large-scale integration into the electricity grid and therefore accurate forecasting of the power generated by PV systems is needed. The objective of this thesis is to explore the possibility of using machine learning methods to accurately predict solar power. We first explored the potential of instance-based methods and proposed two new methods: the data source weighted nearest neighbour (DWkNN) and the extended Pattern Sequence Forecasting (PSF) algorithms. DWkNN uses multiple data sources and considers their importance by learning the best weights based on previous data. PSF1 and PSF2 extended the standard PSF algorithm deal with data from multiple related time series. Then, we proposed two clustering-based methods for PV power prediction: direct and pair patterns. We used clustering to partition the days into groups with similar weather characteristics and then created a separate PV power prediction model for each group. The direct clustering groups the days based on their weather profiles, while the pair patterns consider the weather type transition between two consecutive days. We also investigated ensemble methods and proposed static and dynamic ensembles of neural networks. We first proposed three strategies for creating static ensembles based on random example and feature sampling, as well as four strategies for creating dynamic ensembles by adaptively updating the weights of the ensemble members based on past performance. We then explored the use of meta-learning to further improve the performance of the dynamic ensembles. The methods proposed in this thesis can be used by PV plant and electricity market operators for decision making, improving the utilisation of the generated PV power, planning maintenance and also facilitating the large-scale integration of PV power in the electricity grid