k-Nearest Neighbor Neural Network Models for Very Short-Term Global Solar Irradiance Forecasting Based on Meteorological Data

This paper proposes a novel methodology for very short term forecasting of hourly global solar irradiance (GSI). The proposed methodology is based on meteorology data, especially for optimizing the operation of power generating electricity from photovoltaic (PV) energy. This methodology is a combination of k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) algorithm modelling and artificial neural network (ANN) model. The k-NN-ANN method is designed to forecast GSI for 60 min ahead based on meteorology data for the target PV station which position is surrounded by eight other adjacent PV stations. The novelty of this method is taking into account the meteorology data. A set of GSI measurement samples was available from the PV station in Taiwan which is used as test data. The first method implements k-NN as a preprocessing technique prior to ANN method. The error statistical indicators of k-NN-ANN model the mean absolute bias error (MABE) is 42 W/m2 and the root-mean-square error (RMSE) is 242 W/m2. The models forecasts are then compared to measured data and simulation results indicate that the k-NN-ANN-based model presented in this research can calculate hourly GSI with satisfactory accuracy.