Heuristically enhanced dynamic neural networks for structurally improving photovoltaic power forecasting

Among renewable generators, photovoltaics (PV) is showing an increasing suitability and a lowering cost. However, integration of renewable energy sources possesses many challenges, as the intermittency of these non-conventional sources often requires generation forecast, planning and optimal management. There exists scope to improve present PV yield forecasting models and methods. For example, the popular dynamic neural network modelling method suffers from the lack of a selection mechanism for an optimal network structure. This paper develops an enhanced network for short-term forecasting of PV power yield, termed a `focused time-delay neural network' (FTDNN). The problem of optimizing the FTDNN structure is reduced to optimizing the number of delay steps and the number of neurons in the hidden layer alone and this problem is conveniently solved through heuristics. Two such algorithms, a genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization (PSO) have been tested and both prove efficient and can improve the forecasting accuracy of the dynamic network. Given the success of the PSO in solving this discontinuous structural optimization problem, it is expected that PSO offers potential in optimizing both the structure and parameters of a forecasting model.