Preliminary Analysis on the Difference Between Solar PV Power Output Forecasts

Derived from Remotely Sensed and In-Situ Solar Radiation Data

Solar radiation is one of the critical parameters considered in the forecasting of potential power output from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. It is therefore important that power producers in the Philippines use accurate solar radiation data as input to prediction models in generating forecasted power outputs as required by the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM). This study aims to evaluate the difference between forecasted solar PV power outputs using solar radiation data from Himawari-8 (SWR) and Fengyun-4A (SSI) satellite data, and from Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) ground weather station. Other meteorological factors such as wind speed, wind direction, precipitation, ambient temperature, and relative humidity were extracted from the ERA5 Reanalysis data. Actual solar plant data were used as predictors in the solar PV forecasting using the seasonal auto-regressive integrated moving average with exogenous factors (SARIMAX). A regression analysis was done to analyze the difference among the various sources of solar radiation data. Results showed low agreement on values for each data pair. The observed R-squared are relatively low and varies across data pairs, ERA5 and HIMAWARI got the lowest value at 1.99%, followed by PAGASA and ERA5 (7.38%), ERA5 and FENGYUN (16.32%), PAGASA and HIMAWARI (30.06%), PAGASA and FENGYUN (32.1%), and lastly HIMAWARI and FENGYUN (34.56%). The output of the forecasts was evaluated against the model using PAGASA solar irradiance data and ranked by the MAE and RMSE results. Among the different remotely sensed data, ERA5 (9.39%) and FENGYUN (20.171%) got the closest value MAE and RMSE to the baseline model. The relative error might be due to low spatial resolution of the remotely sensed data and the distance of the actual solar PV installation from the in-situ weather stations. To minimize the difference between satellite-derived solar radiation estimates and the in-situ data, application of different correction factors on the remotely sensed solar radiation data (e.g., influence of cloud, aerosols, albedo).

How to cite:

IEEE

I. Benitez, M. Sotto, M. D. A. Bauzon, J. A. Santos, and J. Principe, “Preliminary Analysis on the Difference Between Solar PV Power Output Forecasts Derived from Remotely Sensed and In-Situ Solar Radiation Data,” 宇宙からの地球環境・災害のモニタリングとリスク評価 : 生研フォーラム論文集 = Monitoring of Global Environment and Disaster Risk Assessment from Space : the IIS Forum proceedings, vol. 30, pp. 47–54, Mar. 2022.

American Psychological Association (APA) 7th Edition

Benitez, I., Sotto, M., Bauzon, M. D. A., Santos, J. A., & Principe, J. (2022). Preliminary Analysis on the Difference Between Solar PV Power Output Forecasts Derived from Remotely Sensed and In-Situ Solar Radiation Data. 宇宙からの地球環境・災害のモニタリングとリスク評価 : 生研フォーラム論文集 = Monitoring of Global Environment and Disaster Risk Assessment from Space : The IIS Forum Proceedings, 30, 47–54.