A novel seasonal grey prediction model with time-lag and interactive effects for forecasting the photovoltaic power generation

Electricity is one of the most important energy sources for the progress of human society. Photovoltaic power generation (PPG) has great potential as a renewable energy source to support sustainable development. However, the unpredictability of photovoltaics because of the uncertain weather conditions, time lags and the complex interactions among related factors may result in instabilities in PPG, which limits its applications in the electric power system. Therefore, accurately identifying the related factors and representing the interactions are the key issues in predicting PPG. For this purpose, a novel seasonal grey prediction model with time-lag and interactive effects, denoted as SGMLI(1,n), is developed to predict the capacity of photovoltaic power generation. More specifically, a time-lag driving term, a periodic driving term, and an interaction driving term are proposed to represent the lag relationship, periodicity, and the interactive effects between two factors, respectively. Utilizing the least square method and the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA), the optimal solution to the nonlinear programming problem is estimated. For elaboration and verification, six grey forecasting models, two statistical techniques, and two machine learning models, are employed for comparison with the SGMLI(1,n) model. Experimental results reveal that the SGMLI(1,n) outperforms benchmark models in forecasting PPG.