Short-term forecast of solar irradiance components using an alternative mathematical approach for the identification of cloud features

Solar energy technologies require precise solar forecasting to reduce power generation losses and protect equipment from irradiance fluctuations. This study introduces an alternative methodology for short-term forecasting of direct normal irradiance (DNI) and global horizontal irradiance (GHI) utilizing ground-based sky images captured by a single device. A low-cost all-sky imager (ASI) was developed, which implements an angular transformation and an optical flow technique to extract cloud features such as shape and velocity. A mathematical model calculates cloud transmittance based on pixel intensity, eliminating complex training steps. Results from a 30-day experimental campaign, incorporating diverse meteorological conditions, were compared against a secondary standard solarimetric station, a smart persistence model, and state-of-the-art approaches. The DNI forecast achieved an RMSE (relative error) of 46.79 W/m2 (11.99%) for 1-min intervals and 90.21 W/m2 (17.54%) for 10-min intervals, while GHI ranged from 31.73 W/m2 (4.68%) to 75.02 W/m2 (13.63%). Pearson correlation coefficients exceeded 0.9 overall, reaching 0.98 and 0.99 for the 1-min DNI and GHI forecasts, and 0.91 and 0.96 for the 10-min DNI and GHI forecasts, respectively, underscoring the system’s accuracy and robustness in complex meteorological scenarios.