Photovoltaic Power Forecasting Using Sky Images and Sun Motion

Solar energy adoption is moving at a rapid pace. The variability in solar energy production causes grid stability issues and hinders mass adoption. To solve these issues, more accurate photovoltaic power forecasting systems are needed. In intra-hour forecasting, the most challenging issue is high ou...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Berresheim, Arne, Agudo Martínez, Antonio
Format: article
Status:Versión aceptada para publicación
Publication Date:2024
Country:España
Institution:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repository:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/388085
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/388085
https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/105001505997
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Deep Learning
Photovoltaic Power Estimation
Sky Images
Sun Tracking
Description
Summary:Solar energy adoption is moving at a rapid pace. The variability in solar energy production causes grid stability issues and hinders mass adoption. To solve these issues, more accurate photovoltaic power forecasting systems are needed. In intra-hour forecasting, the most challenging issue is high output fluctuations due to cloud motion, which can occlude the sun. Using ground-based sky images, this paper proposes two convolutional neural network models for intra-hour nowcasting and forecasting that incorporate physical information on sun motion and cloud coverage by means of the sun area mean pixel intensity. Particularly, our models exploit that information instead of relying exclusively on photovoltaic output history data as it is standard in state of the art. Taking advantage of sun position and cloud coverage information, we were able to reduce the overall root mean squared error for the nowcasting task, making the model more accurate especially during cloudy days, and obtaining competitive results on forecasting. Moreover, our models are more robust against artifacts such as occlusion and noisy observations.