IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v15y2022i18p6659-d912883.html

SENERGY: A Novel Deep Learning-Based Auto-Selective Approach and Tool for Solar Energy Forecasting

Author

Listed:
  • Ghadah Alkhayat

    (Department of Computer Information Systems, Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia)

  • Syed Hamid Hasan

    (Department of Computer Information Systems, Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia)

  • Rashid Mehmood

    (High Performance Computing Centre, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia)

Abstract

Researchers have made great progress in developing cutting-edge solar energy forecasting methods. However, these methods are far from optimal in terms of their accuracy, generalizability, benchmarking, and other requirements. Particularly, no single method performs well across all climates and weather due to the large variations in meteorological data. This paper proposes SENERGY (an acronym for sustainable energy), a novel deep learning-based auto-selective approach and tool that, instead of generalizing a specific model for all climates, predicts the best performing deep learning model for global horizontal irradiance (GHI) forecasting in terms of forecasting error. The approach is based on carefully devised deep learning methods and feature sets created through an extensive analysis of deep learning forecasting and classification methods using ten meteorological datasets from three continents. We analyze the tool in great detail through a variety of metrics and means for performance analysis, visualization, and comparison of solar forecasting methods. SENERGY outperforms existing methods in all performance metrics including mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), the normalized versions of these three metrics (nMAE, nRMSE, nMAPE), forecast skill (FS), and relative forecasting error. The long short-term memory-autoencoder model (LSTM-AE) outperformed the other four forecasting models and achieved the best results (nMAE = nRMSE = nMAPE = 0.02). The LSTM-AE model is the most accurate in all weather conditions. Predictions for sunny days are more accurate than for cloudy days as well as for summer compared to winter. SENERGY can predict the best forecasting model with 81% accuracy. The proposed auto-selective approach can be extended to other research problems, such as wind energy forecasting, and to predict forecasting models based on different criteria such as the energy required or speed of model execution, different input features, different optimizations of the same models, or other user preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Ghadah Alkhayat & Syed Hamid Hasan & Rashid Mehmood, 2022. "SENERGY: A Novel Deep Learning-Based Auto-Selective Approach and Tool for Solar Energy Forecasting," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(18), pages 1-55, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:18:p:6659-:d:912883
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/18/6659/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/18/6659/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marzo, A. & Trigo-Gonzalez, M. & Alonso-Montesinos, J. & Martínez-Durbán, M. & López, G. & Ferrada, P. & Fuentealba, E. & Cortés, M. & Batlles, F.J., 2017. "Daily global solar radiation estimation in desert areas using daily extreme temperatures and extraterrestrial radiation," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 303-311.
    2. Voyant, Cyril & Notton, Gilles & Kalogirou, Soteris & Nivet, Marie-Laure & Paoli, Christophe & Motte, Fabrice & Fouilloy, Alexis, 2017. "Machine learning methods for solar radiation forecasting: A review," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 569-582.
    3. Zheng, Jianqin & Zhang, Haoran & Dai, Yuanhao & Wang, Bohong & Zheng, Taicheng & Liao, Qi & Liang, Yongtu & Zhang, Fengwei & Song, Xuan, 2020. "Time series prediction for output of multi-region solar power plants," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 257(C).
    4. Abreu, Edgar F.M. & Canhoto, Paulo & Prior, Victor & Melicio, R., 2018. "Solar resource assessment through long-term statistical analysis and typical data generation with different time resolutions using GHI measurements," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 398-411.
    5. Zang, Haixiang & Liu, Ling & Sun, Li & Cheng, Lilin & Wei, Zhinong & Sun, Guoqiang, 2020. "Short-term global horizontal irradiance forecasting based on a hybrid CNN-LSTM model with spatiotemporal correlations," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 26-41.
    6. Marchesoni-Acland, Franco & Alonso-Suárez, Rodrigo, 2020. "Intra-day solar irradiation forecast using RLS filters and satellite images," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 1140-1154.
    7. Peng, Tian & Zhang, Chu & Zhou, Jianzhong & Nazir, Muhammad Shahzad, 2021. "An integrated framework of Bi-directional long-short term memory (BiLSTM) based on sine cosine algorithm for hourly solar radiation forecasting," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    8. Despotovic, Milan & Nedic, Vladimir & Despotovic, Danijela & Cvetanovic, Slobodan, 2015. "Review and statistical analysis of different global solar radiation sunshine models," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 1869-1880.
    9. Liu, Yongqi & Qin, Hui & Zhang, Zhendong & Pei, Shaoqian & Wang, Chao & Yu, Xiang & Jiang, Zhiqiang & Zhou, Jianzhong, 2019. "Ensemble spatiotemporal forecasting of solar irradiation using variational Bayesian convolutional gate recurrent unit network," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 253(C), pages 1-1.
    10. Meenal, R. & Selvakumar, A. Immanuel, 2018. "Assessment of SVM, empirical and ANN based solar radiation prediction models with most influencing input parameters," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 324-343.
    11. Istiak Ahmad & Fahad Alqurashi & Ehab Abozinadah & Rashid Mehmood, 2022. "Deep Journalism and DeepJournal V1.0: A Data-Driven Deep Learning Approach to Discover Parameters for Transportation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-72, May.
    12. Nala Alahmari & Sarah Alswedani & Ahmed Alzahrani & Iyad Katib & Aiiad Albeshri & Rashid Mehmood, 2022. "Musawah: A Data-Driven AI Approach and Tool to Co-Create Healthcare Services with a Case Study on Cancer Disease in Saudi Arabia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-41, March.
    13. Yagli, Gokhan Mert & Yang, Dazhi & Srinivasan, Dipti, 2019. "Automatic hourly solar forecasting using machine learning models," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 487-498.
    14. Kaba, Kazım & Sarıgül, Mehmet & Avcı, Mutlu & Kandırmaz, H. Mustafa, 2018. "Estimation of daily global solar radiation using deep learning model," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 126-135.
    15. Khan, Waqas & Walker, Shalika & Zeiler, Wim, 2022. "Improved solar photovoltaic energy generation forecast using deep learning-based ensemble stacking approach," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    16. Fouilloy, Alexis & Voyant, Cyril & Notton, Gilles & Motte, Fabrice & Paoli, Christophe & Nivet, Marie-Laure & Guillot, Emmanuel & Duchaud, Jean-Laurent, 2018. "Solar irradiation prediction with machine learning: Forecasting models selection method depending on weather variability," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 165(PA), pages 620-629.
    17. Byung-ki Jeon & Eui-Jong Kim, 2020. "Next-Day Prediction of Hourly Solar Irradiance Using Local Weather Forecasts and LSTM Trained with Non-Local Data," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-16, October.
    18. Sujan Ghimire & Ravinesh C. Deo & Hua Wang & Mohanad S. Al-Musaylh & David Casillas-Pérez & Sancho Salcedo-Sanz, 2022. "Stacked LSTM Sequence-to-Sequence Autoencoder with Feature Selection for Daily Solar Radiation Prediction: A Review and New Modeling Results," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-39, January.
    19. Gao, Bixuan & Huang, Xiaoqiao & Shi, Junsheng & Tai, Yonghang & Zhang, Jun, 2020. "Hourly forecasting of solar irradiance based on CEEMDAN and multi-strategy CNN-LSTM neural networks," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 1665-1683.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arturs Nikulins & Kaspars Sudars & Edgars Edelmers & Ivars Namatevs & Kaspars Ozols & Vitalijs Komasilovs & Aleksejs Zacepins & Armands Kviesis & Andreas Reinhardt, 2024. "Deep Learning for Wind and Solar Energy Forecasting in Hydrogen Production," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(5), pages 1-12, February.
    2. A-Hyun Jung & Dong-Hyun Lee & Jin-Young Kim & Chang Ki Kim & Hyun-Goo Kim & Yung-Seop Lee, 2022. "Regional Photovoltaic Power Forecasting Using Vector Autoregression Model in South Korea," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(21), pages 1-13, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hongchao Zhang & Tengteng Zhu, 2022. "Stacking Model for Photovoltaic-Power-Generation Prediction," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-16, May.
    2. Qiangsheng Bu & Shuyi Zhuang & Fei Luo & Zhigang Ye & Yubo Yuan & Tianrui Ma & Tao Da, 2024. "Improving Solar Radiation Forecasting in Cloudy Conditions by Integrating Satellite Observations," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(24), pages 1-20, December.
    3. Ghimire, Sujan & Deo, Ravinesh C. & Casillas-Pérez, David & Salcedo-Sanz, Sancho, 2022. "Boosting solar radiation predictions with global climate models, observational predictors and hybrid deep-machine learning algorithms," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 316(C).
    4. Wang, Zhenyu & Zhang, Yunpeng & Li, Guorong & Zhang, Jinlong & Zhou, Hai & Wu, Ji, 2024. "A novel solar irradiance forecasting method based on multi-physical process of atmosphere optics and LSTM-BP model," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    5. Neethu Elizabeth Michael & Manohar Mishra & Shazia Hasan & Ahmed Al-Durra, 2022. "Short-Term Solar Power Predicting Model Based on Multi-Step CNN Stacked LSTM Technique," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-20, March.
    6. Nourani, Vahid & Sharghi, Elnaz & Behfar, Nazanin & Zhang, Yongqiang, 2022. "Multi-step-ahead solar irradiance modeling employing multi-frequency deep learning models and climatic data," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 315(C).
    7. Elizabeth Michael, Neethu & Hasan, Shazia & Al-Durra, Ahmed & Mishra, Manohar, 2022. "Short-term solar irradiance forecasting based on a novel Bayesian optimized deep Long Short-Term Memory neural network," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 324(C).
    8. Kumari, Pratima & Toshniwal, Durga, 2021. "Long short term memory–convolutional neural network based deep hybrid approach for solar irradiance forecasting," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 295(C).
    9. Mehmood, Faiza & Ghani, Muhammad Usman & Asim, Muhammad Nabeel & Shahzadi, Rehab & Mehmood, Aamir & Mahmood, Waqar, 2021. "MPF-Net: A computational multi-regional solar power forecasting framework," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    10. Huang, Xiaoqiao & Li, Qiong & Tai, Yonghang & Chen, Zaiqing & Zhang, Jun & Shi, Junsheng & Gao, Bixuan & Liu, Wuming, 2021. "Hybrid deep neural model for hourly solar irradiance forecasting," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 1041-1060.
    11. Konduru Sudharshan & C. Naveen & Pradeep Vishnuram & Damodhara Venkata Siva Krishna Rao Kasagani & Benedetto Nastasi, 2022. "Systematic Review on Impact of Different Irradiance Forecasting Techniques for Solar Energy Prediction," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(17), pages 1-39, August.
    12. Gupta, Priya & Singh, Rhythm, 2023. "Combining a deep learning model with multivariate empirical mode decomposition for hourly global horizontal irradiance forecasting," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 908-927.
    13. Haider, Syed Altan & Sajid, Muhammad & Sajid, Hassan & Uddin, Emad & Ayaz, Yasar, 2022. "Deep learning and statistical methods for short- and long-term solar irradiance forecasting for Islamabad," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 51-60.
    14. Yang, Yanru & Liu, Yu & Zhang, Yihang & Shu, Shaolong & Zheng, Junsheng, 2025. "DEST-GNN: A double-explored spatio-temporal graph neural network for multi-site intra-hour PV power forecasting," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 378(PA).
    15. Gupta, Priya & Singh, Rhythm, 2023. "Combining simple and less time complex ML models with multivariate empirical mode decomposition to obtain accurate GHI forecast," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 263(PC).
    16. Vu, Ba Hau & Chung, Il-Yop, 2022. "Optimal generation scheduling and operating reserve management for PV generation using RNN-based forecasting models for stand-alone microgrids," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 1137-1154.
    17. Yagli, Gokhan Mert & Yang, Dazhi & Srinivasan, Dipti, 2019. "Automatic hourly solar forecasting using machine learning models," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 487-498.
    18. Liu, Tianhao & Shan, Linke & Jiang, Meihui & Li, Fangning & Kong, Fannie & Du, Pengcheng & Zhu, Hongyu & Goh, Hui Hwang & Kurniawan, Tonni Agustiono & Huang, Chao & Zhang, Dongdong, 2025. "Multi-dimensional data processing and intelligent forecasting technologies for renewable energy generation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 398(C).
    19. Zang, Haixiang & Liu, Ling & Sun, Li & Cheng, Lilin & Wei, Zhinong & Sun, Guoqiang, 2020. "Short-term global horizontal irradiance forecasting based on a hybrid CNN-LSTM model with spatiotemporal correlations," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 26-41.
    20. Gairaa, Kacem & Voyant, Cyril & Notton, Gilles & Benkaciali, Saïd & Guermoui, Mawloud, 2022. "Contribution of ordinal variables to short-term global solar irradiation forecasting for sites with low variabilities," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 890-902.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:18:p:6659-:d:912883. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MDPI Indexing Manager to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.