IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v17y2024i14p3480-d1435461.html

Advancing Renewable Energy Forecasting: A Comprehensive Review of Renewable Energy Forecasting Methods

Author

Listed:
  • Rita Teixeira

    (Department of Engineering, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal)

  • Adelaide Cerveira

    (Department of Mathematics, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal
    INEC-TEC UTAD Pole, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal)

  • Eduardo J. Solteiro Pires

    (Department of Engineering, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal
    INEC-TEC UTAD Pole, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal)

  • José Baptista

    (Department of Engineering, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal
    INEC-TEC UTAD Pole, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal)

Abstract

Socioeconomic growth and population increase are driving a constant global demand for energy. Renewable energy is emerging as a leading solution to minimise the use of fossil fuels. However, renewable resources are characterised by significant intermittency and unpredictability, which impact their energy production and integration into the power grid. Forecasting models are increasingly being developed to address these challenges and have become crucial as renewable energy sources are integrated in energy systems. In this paper, a comparative analysis of forecasting methods for renewable energy production is developed, focusing on photovoltaic and wind power. A review of state-of-the-art techniques is conducted to synthesise and categorise different forecasting models, taking into account climatic variables, optimisation algorithms, pre-processing techniques, and various forecasting horizons. By integrating diverse techniques such as optimisation algorithms and pre-processing methods and carefully selecting the forecast horizon, it is possible to highlight the accuracy and stability of forecasts. Overall, the ongoing development and refinement of forecasting methods are crucial to achieve a sustainable and reliable energy future.

Suggested Citation

  • Rita Teixeira & Adelaide Cerveira & Eduardo J. Solteiro Pires & José Baptista, 2024. "Advancing Renewable Energy Forecasting: A Comprehensive Review of Renewable Energy Forecasting Methods," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(14), pages 1-30, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2024:i:14:p:3480-:d:1435461
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/14/3480/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/14/3480/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lu, Shin-Li, 2019. "Integrating heuristic time series with modified grey forecasting for renewable energy in Taiwan," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 1436-1444.
    2. Rodríguez, Fermín & Fleetwood, Alice & Galarza, Ainhoa & Fontán, Luis, 2018. "Predicting solar energy generation through artificial neural networks using weather forecasts for microgrid control," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 855-864.
    3. Ghimire, Sujan & Deo, Ravinesh C. & Raj, Nawin & Mi, Jianchun, 2019. "Deep solar radiation forecasting with convolutional neural network and long short-term memory network algorithms," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 253(C), pages 1-1.
    4. Wang, Jianzhou & Wang, Shiqi & Yang, Wendong, 2019. "A novel non-linear combination system for short-term wind speed forecast," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 1172-1192.
    5. Yang, Zhongshan & Wang, Jian, 2018. "A combination forecasting approach applied in multistep wind speed forecasting based on a data processing strategy and an optimized artificial intelligence algorithm," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 230(C), pages 1108-1125.
    6. Hassan, Muhammed A. & Bailek, Nadjem & Bouchouicha, Kada & Nwokolo, Samuel Chukwujindu, 2021. "Ultra-short-term exogenous forecasting of photovoltaic power production using genetically optimized non-linear auto-regressive recurrent neural networks," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 191-209.
    7. Benali, L. & Notton, G. & Fouilloy, A. & Voyant, C. & Dizene, R., 2019. "Solar radiation forecasting using artificial neural network and random forest methods: Application to normal beam, horizontal diffuse and global components," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 871-884.
    8. Ahmad, Muhammad Waseem & Mourshed, Monjur & Rezgui, Yacine, 2018. "Tree-based ensemble methods for predicting PV power generation and their comparison with support vector regression," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 465-474.
    9. Wang, Jian & Yang, Zhongshan, 2021. "Ultra-short-term wind speed forecasting using an optimized artificial intelligence algorithm," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 1418-1435.
    10. Kushwaha, Vishal & Pindoriya, Naran M., 2019. "A SARIMA-RVFL hybrid model assisted by wavelet decomposition for very short-term solar PV power generation forecast," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 124-139.
    11. Qian, Zheng & Pei, Yan & Zareipour, Hamidreza & Chen, Niya, 2019. "A review and discussion of decomposition-based hybrid models for wind energy forecasting applications," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 235(C), pages 939-953.
    12. Ding, Yuanping & Dang, Yaoguo, 2023. "Forecasting renewable energy generation with a novel flexible nonlinear multivariable discrete grey prediction model," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    13. Niu, Zhewen & Yu, Zeyuan & Tang, Wenhu & Wu, Qinghua & Reformat, Marek, 2020. "Wind power forecasting using attention-based gated recurrent unit network," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    14. Zhen, Hao & Niu, Dongxiao & Wang, Keke & Shi, Yucheng & Ji, Zhengsen & Xu, Xiaomin, 2021. "Photovoltaic power forecasting based on GA improved Bi-LSTM in microgrid without meteorological information," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    15. Ahmed, Adil & Khalid, Muhammad, 2018. "An intelligent framework for short-term multi-step wind speed forecasting based on Functional Networks," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 225(C), pages 902-911.
    16. He, Qingqing & Wang, Jianzhou & Lu, Haiyan, 2018. "A hybrid system for short-term wind speed forecasting," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 226(C), pages 756-771.
    17. Aasim, & Singh, S.N. & Mohapatra, Abheejeet, 2019. "Repeated wavelet transform based ARIMA model for very short-term wind speed forecasting," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 758-768.
    18. Agga, Ali & Abbou, Ahmed & Labbadi, Moussa & El Houm, Yassine, 2021. "Short-term self consumption PV plant power production forecasts based on hybrid CNN-LSTM, ConvLSTM models," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 101-112.
    19. Liu, Hui & Duan, Zhu & Li, Yanfei & Lu, Haibo, 2018. "A novel ensemble model of different mother wavelets for wind speed multi-step forecasting," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 228(C), pages 1783-1800.
    20. Zhang, Yachao & Le, Jian & Liao, Xiaobing & Zheng, Feng & Li, Yinghai, 2019. "A novel combination forecasting model for wind power integrating least square support vector machine, deep belief network, singular spectrum analysis and locality-sensitive hashing," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 558-572.
    21. Mellit, A. & Pavan, A. Massi & Lughi, V., 2021. "Deep learning neural networks for short-term photovoltaic power forecasting," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 276-288.
    22. 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).
    23. Camal, S. & Teng, F. & Michiorri, A. & Kariniotakis, G. & Badesa, L., 2019. "Scenario generation of aggregated Wind, Photovoltaics and small Hydro production for power systems applications," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 242(C), pages 1396-1406.
    24. Wu, Chunying & Wang, Jianzhou & Chen, Xuejun & Du, Pei & Yang, Wendong, 2020. "A novel hybrid system based on multi-objective optimization for wind speed forecasting," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 149-165.
    25. Wang, Gang & Jia, Ru & Liu, Jinhai & Zhang, Huaguang, 2020. "A hybrid wind power forecasting approach based on Bayesian model averaging and ensemble learning," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 2426-2434.
    26. Song, Jingjing & Wang, Jianzhou & Lu, Haiyan, 2018. "A novel combined model based on advanced optimization algorithm for short-term wind speed forecasting," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 643-658.
    27. Shahid, Farah & Zameer, Aneela & Muneeb, Muhammad, 2021. "A novel genetic LSTM model for wind power forecast," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 223(C).
    28. Eseye, Abinet Tesfaye & Zhang, Jianhua & Zheng, Dehua, 2018. "Short-term photovoltaic solar power forecasting using a hybrid Wavelet-PSO-SVM model based on SCADA and Meteorological information," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 357-367.
    29. Wang, Kejun & Qi, Xiaoxia & Liu, Hongda, 2019. "Photovoltaic power forecasting based LSTM-Convolutional Network," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    30. Nam, KiJeon & Hwangbo, Soonho & Yoo, ChangKyoo, 2020. "A deep learning-based forecasting model for renewable energy scenarios to guide sustainable energy policy: A case study of Korea," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    31. Hany Elgamal, Ahmed & Kocher-Oberlehner, Gudrun & Robu, Valentin & Andoni, Merlinda, 2019. "Optimization of a multiple-scale renewable energy-based virtual power plant in the UK," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 256(C).
    32. Yang, Zhongshan & Wang, Jian, 2018. "A hybrid forecasting approach applied in wind speed forecasting based on a data processing strategy and an optimized artificial intelligence algorithm," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 87-100.
    33. Wang, Kejun & Qi, Xiaoxia & Liu, Hongda, 2019. "A comparison of day-ahead photovoltaic power forecasting models based on deep learning neural network," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 251(C), pages 1-1.
    34. Sergio Cantillo-Luna & Ricardo Moreno-Chuquen & David Celeita & George Anders, 2023. "Deep and Machine Learning Models to Forecast Photovoltaic Power Generation," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(10), pages 1-24, May.
    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. Yao, Yuanzhu & Xia, Peng & Zhao, Lingyun & Yang, Cong & Wang, Ke & Ling, Yun & Huang, Zehuan, 2025. "The combustion characteristics of hydrothermal carbonization products from traditional Chinese medicine residue," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 330(C).
    2. Marta Wesolowska & Dorota Żelazna-Jochim & Krystian Wisniewski & Jaroslaw Krzywanski & Marcin Sosnowski & Wojciech Nowak, 2025. "Optimization of Biomass Delivery Through Artificial Intelligence Techniques," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(18), pages 1-17, September.
    3. Hussan, Umair & Wang, Huaizhi & Peng, Jianchun & Jiang, Hui & Rasheed, Hamna, 2026. "Transformer-based renewable energy forecasting: A comprehensive review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 226(PC).
    4. Jia, Zhengyang & Sun, Yuanxiu & Liu, Yueliang & Pan, Yi & Wang, Zilong & Li, Yuanyuan, 2025. "Study on the characteristics of CO2 seepage and heat transfer in rough fractures based on thermo-hydro-mechanical coupling," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 341(C).
    5. Ferdaus, Md Meftahul & Dam, Tanmoy & Sarkar, Md Rasel & Uddin, Moslem & Anavatti, Sreenatha G., 2026. "Foundation models for clean energy forecasting: A comprehensive review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 226(PE).
    6. Emmanuel Ejuh Che & Kang Roland Abeng & Chu Donatus Iweh & George J. Tsekouras & Armand Fopah-Lele, 2025. "The Impact of Integrating Variable Renewable Energy Sources into Grid-Connected Power Systems: Challenges, Mitigation Strategies, and Prospects," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(3), pages 1-31, February.
    7. Shahbazbegian, Amirhussein & Ghiasi, Mahmoud, 2026. "Developing a machine learning (ML) based graphical user interface (GUI) for significant wave height (SWH) forecasting to support wave energy converters (WECs) operations planning," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 256(PG).
    8. Zhichao Qiu & Ye Tian & Yanhong Luo & Taiyu Gu & Hengyu Liu, 2024. "Wind and Photovoltaic Power Generation Forecasting for Virtual Power Plants Based on the Fusion of Improved K-Means Cluster Analysis and Deep Learning," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(23), pages 1-24, December.

    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. Wang, Yun & Zou, Runmin & Liu, Fang & Zhang, Lingjun & Liu, Qianyi, 2021. "A review of wind speed and wind power forecasting with deep neural networks," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 304(C).
    2. Sabadus, Andreea & Blaga, Robert & Hategan, Sergiu-Mihai & Calinoiu, Delia & Paulescu, Eugenia & Mares, Oana & Boata, Remus & Stefu, Nicoleta & Paulescu, Marius & Badescu, Viorel, 2024. "A cross-sectional survey of deterministic PV power forecasting: Progress and limitations in current approaches," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    3. Ma, Zhengjing & Mei, Gang, 2022. "A hybrid attention-based deep learning approach for wind power prediction," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 323(C).
    4. Liu, Hui & Duan, Zhu, 2020. "A vanishing moment ensemble model for wind speed multi-step prediction with multi-objective base model selection," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 261(C).
    5. Liu, Hui & Duan, Zhu & Chen, Chao, 2020. "Wind speed big data forecasting using time-variant multi-resolution ensemble model with clustering auto-encoder," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 280(C).
    6. Lu, Hongfang & Ma, Xin & Huang, Kun & Azimi, Mohammadamin, 2020. "Prediction of offshore wind farm power using a novel two-stage model combining kernel-based nonlinear extension of the Arps decline model with a multi-objective grey wolf optimizer," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    7. 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).
    8. Korkmaz, Deniz, 2021. "SolarNet: A hybrid reliable model based on convolutional neural network and variational mode decomposition for hourly photovoltaic power forecasting," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 300(C).
    9. Lu, Peng & Ye, Lin & Zhao, Yongning & Dai, Binhua & Pei, Ming & Tang, Yong, 2021. "Review of meta-heuristic algorithms for wind power prediction: Methodologies, applications and challenges," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 301(C).
    10. Liu, Hui & Chen, Chao, 2019. "Data processing strategies in wind energy forecasting models and applications: A comprehensive review," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 249(C), pages 392-408.
    11. Liu, Xingdou & Zhang, Li & Wang, Jiangong & Zhou, Yue & Gan, Wei, 2023. "A unified multi-step wind speed forecasting framework based on numerical weather prediction grids and wind farm monitoring data," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 948-963.
    12. 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).
    13. Huang, Congzhi & Yang, Mengyuan, 2023. "Memory long and short term time series network for ultra-short-term photovoltaic power forecasting," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 279(C).
    14. Li, Dan & Jiang, Fuxin & Chen, Min & Qian, Tao, 2022. "Multi-step-ahead wind speed forecasting based on a hybrid decomposition method and temporal convolutional networks," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 238(PC).
    15. liu, Qian & li, Yulin & jiang, Hang & chen, Yilin & zhang, Jiang, 2024. "Short-term photovoltaic power forecasting based on multiple mode decomposition and parallel bidirectional long short term combined with convolutional neural networks," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 286(C).
    16. Jin, Huaiping & Shi, Lixian & Chen, Xiangguang & Qian, Bin & Yang, Biao & Jin, Huaikang, 2021. "Probabilistic wind power forecasting using selective ensemble of finite mixture Gaussian process regression models," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 1-18.
    17. Liu, Hui & Chen, Chao, 2019. "Multi-objective data-ensemble wind speed forecasting model with stacked sparse autoencoder and adaptive decomposition-based error correction," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 254(C).
    18. Sameer Al-Dahidi & Manoharan Madhiarasan & Loiy Al-Ghussain & Ahmad M. Abubaker & Adnan Darwish Ahmad & Mohammad Alrbai & Mohammadreza Aghaei & Hussein Alahmer & Ali Alahmer & Piero Baraldi & Enrico Z, 2024. "Forecasting Solar Photovoltaic Power Production: A Comprehensive Review and Innovative Data-Driven Modeling Framework," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(16), pages 1-38, August.
    19. Yin, Linfei & Cao, Xinghui & Liu, Dongduan, 2023. "Weighted fully-connected regression networks for one-day-ahead hourly photovoltaic power forecasting," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 332(C).
    20. Lim, Juin Yau & Safder, Usman & How, Bing Shen & Ifaei, Pouya & Yoo, Chang Kyoo, 2021. "Nationwide sustainable renewable energy and Power-to-X deployment planning in South Korea assisted with forecasting model," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 283(C).

    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:17:y:2024:i:14:p:3480-:d:1435461. 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.