Search

This document is a guest editorial from the journal IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution. It discusses the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in reliable forecasting for energy sectors. The editorial highlights the challenges of integrating renewable energy sources and fluctuating electricity demand, and emphasizes the importance of accurate forecasting for system operators. The document also provides summaries of several papers included in a special issue on AI-empowered forecasting in energy sectors, covering topics such as load forecasting, wind power prediction, and control parameter optimization. The editorial concludes by recommending further research and practical implementations of AI approaches in the energy sectors. [Extracted from the article]

Energy has an effective role in economic growth and development of societies. This paper is studying the impact of climate factors on performance of solar power plant using machine learning techniques for underlying relationship among factors that impact solar energy production and for forecasting monthly energy production. In this context this work provides two machine learning methods: ANN for forecasting energy production and decision tree useful in understanding the relationships in energy production data. Both structures have horizontal irradiation, sunlight duration, average monthly air temperature, average maximal air temperature, average minimal air temperature and average monthly wind speed as inputs parameters and the energy production as output. Results have shown that used machine learning models perform effectively, ANN predicted the energy production of the PV power plant with a correlation coefficient higher than 0.97. The results can help stakeholders in determining energy policy planning in order to overcome uncertainties associated with renewable energy resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy is now in high demand due to the deterioration of the global climate and the depletion of conventional sources. Renewable energy sources (RES) such as wind and solar are extremely intermittent, making it impossible to sustain system reliability with an unacceptably high proportion of renewable energy injection. An intrinsic attribute common to all renewable power plants is that the production of energy relies on environmental conditions such as temperature, pressure, wind speed, humidity, clouds, etc. Therefore, the power from RES cannot be completely regulated or pre-planned. It is important to forecast the amount of electricity that can be produced in a power grid for future demand. Machine learning (ML) is an emerging technology and used in all fields nowadays to perform different tasks. In this paper, the applications of machine learning in renewable energy sources are discussed. These ML techniques are mainly used to predict the power from renewable energy sources like wind, solar, hydro, biomass, tidal, and geothermal. Fault detection is a significant aspect in renewable energy systems to reduce the operation and maintenance cost and to deliver the continuous power to the loads. This paper also focusses on the use of ML techniques in predicting the faults before it occurs, early detection of faults and also to diagnose the faults in renewable energy systems. Along with the above-mentioned applications, these ML techniques used in RES for different purposes are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of renewable energy sources is becoming increasingly widespread around the world due to various factors, the most relevant of which is the high environmental friendliness of these types of energy resources. However, the large-scale involvement of green energy leads to the creation of distributed energy networks that combine several different generation methods, each of which has its own specific features, and as a result, the data collection and processing necessary to optimize the operation of such energy systems become more relevant. Development of new technologies for the more optimal use of RES is one of the main tasks of modern research in the field of energy, where an important place is assigned to the use of technologies based on artificial intelligence, allowing researchers to significantly increase the efficiency of the use of all types of RES within energy systems. This paper proposes to consider the methodology of application of modern approaches to the assessment of the amount of energy obtained from renewable energy sources based on artificial intelligence technologies, approaches used for data processing and for optimization of the control processes for operating energy systems with the integration of renewable energy sources. The relevance of the work lies in the formation of a general approach applied to the evaluation of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind energy based on the use of artificial intelligence technologies. As a verification of the approach considered by the authors, a number of models for predicting the amount of solar power generation using photovoltaic panels have been implemented, for which modern machine-learning methods have been used. As a result of testing for quality and accuracy, the best results were obtained using a hybrid forecasting model, which combines the joint use of a random forest model applied at the stage of the normalization of the input data, exponential smoothing model, and LSTM model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to favourable economic and environmental concerns, reduced power losses, and technological advancements in data science, large-scale renewable energy sources (RESs) are being inserted into smart microgrids (MGs). Generally, these resources are inserted at the distribution level and feed consumers locally with better reliability. The planning and stable operation of the power networks are complicated at numerous levels as a result of large-scale renewable integration, as the infeed from renewable sources like wind and solar is highly intermittent and uncertain, significantly affecting the resilient, intelligent, and optimal operation of the power system. The creation of scenarios is an essential step in the planning and stable operation of renewable-rich power systems. Scenarios can be generated based on seasonal events to mitigate growing complexity and intermittency. In this paper, time-series solar data is used for forecasting solar irradiance using long-short-term memory (LSTM). Besides, a cost-based optimisation model has been developed by using stochastic programming to obtain both the optimal sizing and optimal switching sequence of distributed units as well as the optimal number of required units. The stochastic nature of solar and load demand is considered in beta (β ) distribution. The objective function formulated covers different costs, like capital, operational, and switching costs associated with required units. The running cost incorporated with the capital cost gives us a broader design for planning the MG, thus making it both planning and operational problem. The entire proposed MG planning problem has been developed in a Python and MATLAB ® environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of increasing renewable energy penetration, frequent power network congestion has become a key issue limiting the available transfer capability of trading channels. In order to avoid power network congestion while improving the overall utilization of trading channels, we propose a method for calculating the available transfer capability of a trading channel based on power network congestion forecasting. First, this study uses a histogram-based gradient tree boosting (HGTB) model to forecast the severity and probability of power network congestion, which enables power system operators to determine the specific circumstances of congestion occurrence. Second, we analyze the sensitivity of the power trading network and generating units to transmission lines, aiming to calculate the available transfer capability of the trading channel on the basis of taking into account the control of transmission line congestion and the balance of supply and demand in the power market. Finally, the validity of the validation methodology is verified based on a case study of the power system in central China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate and interpretable short-term load forecasting tasks are essential to the optimal operation of liberalized electricity markets since they contribute to the efficient development of energy trading and demand response strategies as well as the successful integration of renewable energy sources. Consequently, performant day-ahead consumption forecasting models need to capture feature nonlinearities, analyze system dynamics and conserve evolving temporal patterns in order to minimize the impact of noise and adapt to concept drift. Prominent estimators and standalone decomposition-based approaches may not fully address those challenges as they often yield small error rate improvements and omit optimal time series evolution. Therefore, in this work we propose a combinatorial component decomposition method focused on the selection of important renewable generation component sequences extracted from the combined output of seasonal-trend decomposition using locally estimated scatterplot smoothing, singular spectrum analysis and empirical mode decomposition methods. The proposed method was applied on five well-known kernel models in order to evaluate day-ahead consumption forecasts on linear, tree-based and neural network structures. Moreover, for the assessment of pattern conservation, an intuitive metric function, labeled as Weighted Average Unanchored Chain Divergence (WAUCD), based on distance scores and unanchored time series chains is introduced. The results indicated that the application of the combinatorial component method improved the accuracy and the pattern conservation capabilities of most models substantially. In this examination, the long short-term memory (LSTM) and deep neural network (DNN) kernels reduced their mean absolute percentage error by 46.87% and 42.76% respectively and predicted sequences that consistently evolved over 30% closer to the original target in terms of daily and weekly patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advancement towards utilizing renewable energy sources is crucial for mitigating environmental issues such as air pollution and climate change. Offshore wind turbines, particularly floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs), are developed to harness the stronger, steadier winds available over deep waters. Accurate metocean data forecasts, encompassing wind speed and wave height, are crucial for offshore wind farms' optimal placement, operation, and maintenance and contribute significantly to FOWT's efficiency, safety, and lifespan. This study examines the application of three machine learning (ML) models, including Facebook Prophet, Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average with Exogenous Factors (SARIMAX), and long short-term memory (LSTM), to forecast wind speeds and significant wave heights, using data from a buoy situated in the Pacific Ocean. The models are evaluated based on their ability to predict 1-, 3-, and 30-day future wind speed and wave height values, with performances assessed through Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) metrics. Among the models, LSTM displayed superior performance, effectively capturing the complex temporal dependencies in the data. Incorporating exogenous variables, such as atmospheric conditions and gust speed, further refined the predictions.The study's findings highlight the potential of machine learning (ML) models to enhance the integration and reliability of renewable energy sources through accurate metocean forecasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting electricity production from renewable energy sources, such as solar photovoltaic installations, is crucial for effective grid management and energy planning in the transition towards a sustainable future. This study proposes machine learning approaches for predicting electricity production from solar photovoltaic installations at a regional level in Italy, not using data on individual installations. Addressing the challenge of diverse data availability between pinpoint meteorological inputs and aggregated power data for entire regions, we propose leveraging meteorological data from the centroid of each Italian province within each region. Particular attention is given to the selection of the best input features, which leads to augmenting the input with 1-hour-lagged meteorological data and previous-hour power data. Several ML approaches were compared and examined, optimizing the hyperparameters through five-fold cross-validation. The hourly predictions encompass a time horizon ranging from 1 to 24 h. Among tested methods, Kernel Ridge Regression and Random Forest Regression emerge as the most effective models for our specific application. We also performed experiments to assess how frequently the models should be retrained and how frequently the hyperparameters should be optimized in order to comprise between accuracy and computational costs. Our results indicate that once trained, the model can provide accurate predictions for extended periods without frequent retraining, highlighting its long-term reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of photovoltaic (PV) systems into the global energy landscape has been boosted in recent years, driven by environmental concerns and research into renewable energy sources. The accurate prediction of temperature and solar irradiance is essential for optimizing the performance and grid integration of PV systems. Machine learning (ML) has become an effective tool for improving the accuracy of these predictions. This comprehensive review explores the pioneer techniques and methodologies employed in the field of ML-based forecasting of temperature and solar irradiance for PV systems. This article presents a comparative study between various algorithms and techniques commonly used for temperature and solar radiation forecasting. These include regression models such as decision trees, random forest, XGBoost, and support vector machines (SVM). The beginning of this article highlights the importance of accurate weather forecasts for the operation of PV systems and the challenges associated with traditional meteorological models. Next, fundamental concepts of machine learning are explored, highlighting the benefits of improved accuracy in estimating the PV power generation for grid integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]