Application of Machine Learning Algorithms for Solar Power Forecasting in Sri Lanka

Reliability and stability of a power system get decrease with the integration of large proportion of renewable energy. Renewable sources such as solar and wind are highly intermittent, and it is difficult to maintain system stability with intolerable proportion of renewable energy injection. Solar power forecasting can be used to improve system stability by providing approximated future power generation to system control engineers and it will facilitate dispatch of hydro power plants in an optimum way. Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have shown great performance in time series forecasting and hence can be used to forecast power using weather parameters as model inputs. This paper presents the application of several ML algorithms for solar power forecasting in Buruthakanda solar park situated in Hambantota, Sri Lanka. The forecasting performance of implemented ML algorithms is compared with Smart Persistence (SP) method and the research shows that the ML models outperforms SP model.