Application of machine learning methods in photovoltaic output power prediction: A review

Abstract

As the proportion of photovoltaic (PV) power generation rapidly increases, accurate PV output power prediction becomes more crucial to energy efficiency and renewable energy production. There are numerous approaches for PV output power prediction. Many researchers have previously summarized PV output power prediction from different angles. However, there are relatively few studies that use machine learning methods as a means to conduct a separate review of PV output power prediction. This review classifies machine learning methods from different perspectives and provides a systematic and critical review of machine learning methods for recent PV output power applications in terms of the temporal and spatial scales of prediction and finds that the artificial neural network and support vector machine are used much more frequently than other methods. In addition, this study examines the differences between the output power prediction of individual PV plants and regional PV stations and the benefits of regional PV plant prediction, while this paper presents some performance evaluation matrices commonly used for PV output power prediction. In addition, to further improve the accuracy of machine learning methods for PV output power prediction, some researchers suggest preprocessing the input data of the prediction models or considering hybrid machine learning methods. Furthermore, the potential advantages of machine model optimization for prediction performance improvement are discussed and explored in detail.