Photovoltaic systems have been widely deployed in recent times to meet the increased electricity demand as an environmental-friendly energy source. The major challenge for integrating photovoltaic systems in power systems is the unpredictability of the solar power generated. In this paper, we analyze the impact of having access to weather information for solar power generation prediction and find weather information that can help best predict photovoltaic power.
Abstract With the increasing use of large-scale grid-connected photovoltaic system, accurate forecast approach for the power output of photovoltaic system has become an important issue. In order to forecast the power output of a photovoltaic system at 24-hour-ahead without any complex modeling and complicated calculation, an artificial neural network based approach is proposed in this paper. The improved back-propagation learning algorithm is adopted to overcome shortcomings of the standard back-propagation learning algorithm. Similar day selection algorithm based on forecast day information is proposed to improve forecast accuracy in different weather types. Forecasting results of a photovoltaic system show that the proposed approach has a great accuracy and efficiency for forecasting the power output of photovoltaic system.