Predicting the Performance of Solar Power Generation Using Deep Learning Methods

Abstract

In recent years, many countries have provided promotion policies related to renewable energy in order to take advantage of the environmental factors of sufficient sunlight. However, the application of solar energy in the power grid also has disadvantages. The most obvious is the variability of power output, which will put pressure on the system. As more grid reserves are needed to compensate for fluctuations in power output, the variable nature of solar power may hinder further deployment. Besides, one of the main issues surrounding solar energy is the variability and unpredictability of sunlight. If it is cloudy or covered by clouds during the day, the photovoltaic cell cannot produce satisfactory electricity. How to collect relevant factors (variables) and data to make predictions so that the solar system can increase the power generation of solar power plants is an important topic that every solar supplier is constantly thinking about. The view is taken, therefore, in this work, we utilized the historical monitoring data collected by the ground-connected solar power plants to predict the power generation, using daily characteristics (24 h) to replace the usual seasonal characteristics (365 days) as the experimental basis. Further, we implemented daily numerical prediction of the whole-point power generation. The preliminary experimental evaluations demonstrate that our developed method is sensible, allowing for exploring the performance of solar power prediction.