Comparative Study of Univariate and Multivariate Long Short-Term Memory for Very Short-Term Forecasting of Global Horizontal Irradiance

Abstract

Accurate global horizontal irradiance (GHI) forecasting is crucial for efficient management and forecasting of the output power of photovoltaic power plants. However, developing a reliable GHI forecasting model is challenging because GHI varies over time, and its variation is affected by changes in weather patterns. Recently, the long short-term memory (LSTM) deep learning network has become a powerful tool for modeling complex time series problems. This work aims to develop and compare univariate and several multivariate LSTM models that can predict GHI in Guntur, India on a very short-term basis. To build the multivariate time series models, we considered all possible combinations of temperature, humidity, and wind direction variables along with GHI as inputs and developed seven multivariate models, while in the univariate model, we considered only GHI variability. We collected the meteorological data for Guntur from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2016 and built 12 datasets, each containing variability of GHI, temperature, humidity, and wind direction of a month. We then constructed the models, each of which measures up to 2 h ahead of forecasting of GHI. Finally, to measure the symmetry among the models, we evaluated the performances of the prediction models using root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE). The results indicate that, compared to the univariate method, each multivariate LSTM performs better in the very short-term GHI prediction task. Moreover, among the multivariate LSTM models, the model that incorporates the temperature variable with GHI as input has outweighed others, achieving average RMSE values 0.74 W/m2–1.5 W/m2.