FORECASTING POWER OUTPUT

OF PHOTOVOLTAIC
SYSTEMS BASED ON WEATHER
CLASSIFICATION
AND SUPPORT VECTOR
MACHINES

Guided by:
1

Mrs. Aiswarya
Asst.professor

Department of EEE

submitted by:

Joby Thomas Tharakan

s7EEE

roll no 17

CONTENTS
Introduction
Photovoltaic system power output characteristics
Support vector machine
PV power output forecasting model based on
weather classification
Data preprocessing
Support Vector Machine Model
Forecasting Accuracy Evaluation
ForecasResult and Discussionting
Conclusion
References

INTRODUCTION
PV is a method of generating electrical power by
converting solar radiation into direct current
electricity using semiconductors
PV technology has been improved significantly
and its application crosses different aspects of life
there are two frequently used approaches for PV
output forecasting:
one is based on the sunshine intensity
method (indirect methods)
the other one is based on the system output
(direct methods)

PHOTOVOLTAIC SYSTEM POWER

OUTPUT CHARACTERISTICS
PV power output is unsteady and difficult to
control.
The power output from the instrument fluctuates
along with the intensity of solar radiation , which
has random affections based on the season and
the geographical location
the temperature of the PV affects the conversion
efficiency.

PV systems have negative efficiency coefficients

The temperature inside PV systems is normally

higher than the environment temperature
= 0 [1 (Tp T)]
This is the expression conversation efficiency of
the PV system

power generation from PV is proportional to the

solar radiation, and the power output at t moment
P=IA

SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE

SVM is a general learning method developed from
Statistical Learning Theory with better performance
than many other routine methods
For a given observations sample set: P(x, y), (x1, y1),
(x2, y2), . . . , (xn, yx) R^n R.
It is assumed that the regression function is: F = {f|f(x)
= T x + b,w R^n}

To construct the optimal hyperplane in the case where

the data is linearly inseparable, the main idea is to
map the input vector x into high-dimensional feature
space by using a nonlinear mapping process and then
perform linear regression in the feature space

subject to
yi ( (xi) + b) 1 i, 0, i = 1, . . . , C > 0.

radial basis function (RBF) kernel

polynomial kernel
K(x, xi) = (1+x xi)^d

PV POWER OUTPUT FORECASTING

MODEL BASED ON WEATHER
CLASSIFICATION
Since there are various factors affecting the PV
output power , it is difficult to figure out the
tendency with a single model.
Based on the unsteady, periodic characteristics
and the nonlinear relationship between power
outputs and affecting factors, I present SVM model
for forecasting PV power output.
In this paper, the PV system power output is
classified into four types according to weather
condition, which is cloudy, foggy, sunny , and rainy.
Based on the weather report of the next day, the
weather type and condition are selected

1st fig shows the generation of power in 6 days.

From the fig, we can see that there is a high
correlation between power outputs every day.
2nd fig shows the power output data in PV system
in different days under 4 weather types.

DATA PREPROCESSING
SVM is a nonlinear model that maps the
nonlinear model input to a higher space to make
it linear
Data with wider range will generate imprecise
data fitting and cause the regression to reduce
precision
If the data is preprocessed into a smaller range
before it is inputted into the model, the precision
can be increased.

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SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE

MODEL
SVM is an effective nonlinear
artificial intelligence model
SVM has better calculating
speed and good convergence
results and will not be trapped
into local minimum values

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Based on the advantages and the characteristics of SVM of PV

systems, the short-term PV power output model is established
through the following steps.
a) The historical model data samples are classified into
four groups based on the historical weather condition : sunny
day, foggy day, rainy day, and
cloudy day
b) In each group, according to the preprocessing
normalization method, the data samples which include training
data and testing data are created;
c) Global variables in SVM are defined as P1 and C.
P1
is the width of the kernel function and C is a
coefficient. Both
variables are given an idiographic data range; in general, the
range of P1 is (1, 10) while the range of C is (1, 10) according
to model setting
experience
d) The RBF function, which is frequently used to establish
the model, is selected to be the kernel function in this paper
where the insensitive coefficient is defined as 0.005;
e) After antinormalization of the forecasting data, four
SVM PV power forecasting models are set up to deal with
different weather conditions.

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FORECASTING ACCURACY
EVALUATION

Mean relative error (MRE) and root mean square

error (RMSE) as shown below will be used to
evaluate the forecasting accuracy

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FORECASTING RESULT AND

DISCUSSION

The forecasting models are defined and trained,

respectively, to obtain the best forecasting result

After model training and testing, the forecasting

results of the four models are shown in Fig. 5.
Based upon the 24-h-ahead weather report, we
know the next days weather condition in advance

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From Table, it can be seen that

the four models, particularly
the Sunny Model, perform well
in PV power output forecasting.
The average forecasting
precision for one-day ahead is
2.10 MW in RMSE and 8.64% in MRE
After selecting the model type based on the
weather report of the next day, the forecasting
output data can be obtained after the training
process

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Among the four models, the errors range from

50% to 39%. Generally speaking, the Sunny
Model performs the best with a mean value of
4.85%, following which are the Foggy Model, the
Rainy Model, and the Cloudy Model with the
mean value of 8.16%, 9.12%, and 12.42%,
respectively.
For (a) and (c), there are significant differences
between the historical and forecasting values.

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CONCLUSION
This paper presented a novel model for one-day-ahead PV
power output forecasting based on the principle of SVM
and the characteristic of weather classification.
a) Based upon correlation analysis, the time series of
PV power output data in the test period are classified
into four groups based on the local weather report.
b) Four SVM models are set up according to
algorithm principle and data samples characteristics
including maximum, minimum,
and mean
temperature of different weather classification. After
the case study, the forecasting errors of the proposed
model are 2.10 MW (RMSE) and 8.64% (MRE), for the
sample PV installation. The approach shows promising
results for the application of SVM model in PV power
output forecasting.

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REFERENCES
[1] L. Q. Liu, Z. X. Wang, H. Q. Zhang, and Y. C. Xue, Solar energy
development in ChinaA review, Renewable Sustainable Energy
Rev., vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 301311, Jan. 2010.
[2] Q. Li, The analysis of Solar photovoltaic power generation
market, Adv. Mater. Ind., vol. 8, pp. 1822, 2009.
[3] T. Muneer, M. Gul, and H. Kambezedis, Evaluation of an all-sky
meteorological radiation model against long-term measured
hourly data, Energy Convers. Manage., vol. 39, no. 3/4, pp. 303
317, Feb./Mar. 1998.
[4] Y. Lin, The model of the solar radiation energys establishment
and verification, J. Anhui Inst. Archit. Ind., vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 44
46, May 2007.
[5] D. Heinemann, E. Lorenz, and M. Girodo, Forecasting of solar
radiation, in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Ind. Electron., 2008, pp.
15371541.

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