Solar radiation forecasting using boosting decision tree and recurrent neural networks

Recently, as the importance of environmental protection has emerged, interest in new and renewable energy is also increasing worldwide. In particular, the solar energy sector accounts for the highest production rate among new and renewable energy in Korea due to its infinite resources, easy installation and maintenance, and eco-friendly characteristics such as low noise emission levels and less pollutants during power generation. However, although climate prediction is essential since solar power is affected by weather and climate change, solar radiation, which is closely related to solar power, is not currently forecasted by the Korea Meteorological Administration. Solar radiation prediction can be the basis for establishing a reasonable new and renewable energy operation plan, and it is very important because it can be used not only in solar power but also in other fields such as power consumption prediction. Therefore, this study was conducted for the purpose of improving the accuracy of solar radiation. Solar radiation was predicted by a total of three weather variables, temperature, humidity, and cloudiness, and solar radiation outside the atmosphere, and the results were compared using various models. The CatBoost model was best obtained by fitting and comparing the Boosting series (XGB, CatBoost) and RNN series (Simple RNN, LSTM, GRU) models. In addition, the results were further improved through Time series cross-validation.