Solar irradiation forecast enhancement using clustering based CNN-BiLSTM-attention hybrid architecture with PSO

Abstract

Accurate solar irradiation forecasting is essential for optimising solar energy use. This paper presents a novel forecasting approach: the ‘Clustering-based CNN-BiLSTM-Attention Hybrid Architecture with PSO’. It combines clustering, attention mechanisms, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Bidirectional Long-Short Term Memory (BiLSTM) networks, and Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) into a unified framework. Clustering categorises days into groups, improving predictive capabilities. The CNN-BiLSTM model captures spatial and temporal features, identifying complex patterns. PSO optimises the hybrid model’s hyperparameters, while an attention mechanism assigns probability weights to relevant information, enhancing performance. By leveraging spatial and temporal patterns in solar data, the proposed model improves forecasting accuracy in univariate and multivariate analyses with multi-step predictions. Extensive tests on real-world datasets from various locations show the model’s effectiveness. For example, with NASA power data, the model achieves a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 24.028 W/m2, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 43.025 W/m2, and an R2 score of 0.984 for 1-hour ahead forecasting. The results show significant improvements over conventional methods. © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.