Probabilistic Solar Forecasts as a Binary Event Using a Sky Camera

Mathieu David (), Joaquín Alonso-Montesinos, Josselin Le Gal La Salle and Philippe Lauret
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Mathieu David: PIMENT, University of La Réunion, 97715 Saint-Denis, France
Joaquín Alonso-Montesinos: Department of Chemistry and Physics, University of Almería, 04120 Almería, Spain
Josselin Le Gal La Salle: PIMENT, University of La Réunion, 97715 Saint-Denis, France
Philippe Lauret: PIMENT, University of La Réunion, 97715 Saint-Denis, France

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 20, 1-18

Abstract: With the fast increase of solar energy plants, a high-quality short-term forecast is required to smoothly integrate their production in the electricity grids. Usually, forecasting systems predict the future solar energy as a continuous variable. But for particular applications, such as concentrated solar plants with tracking devices, the operator needs to anticipate the achievement of a solar irradiance threshold to start or stop their system. In this case, binary forecasts are more relevant. Moreover, while most forecasting systems are deterministic, the probabilistic approach provides additional information about their inherent uncertainty that is essential for decision-making. The objective of this work is to propose a methodology to generate probabilistic solar forecasts as a binary event for very short-term horizons between 1 and 30 min. Among the various techniques developed to predict the solar potential for the next few minutes, sky imagery is one of the most promising. Therefore, we propose in this work to combine a state-of-the-art model based on a sky camera and a discrete choice model to predict the probability of an irradiance threshold suitable for plant operators. Two well-known parametric discrete choice models, logit and probit models, and a machine learning technique, random forest, were tested to post-process the deterministic forecast derived from sky images. All three models significantly improve the quality of the original deterministic forecast. However, random forest gives the best results and especially provides reliable probability predictions.

Keywords: solar energy; concentrated solar plant (CSP); binary probabilistic forecasts; all sky imager (ASI); photovoltaic (PV); Brier Score (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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