IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v13y2020i18p4868-d415092.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Novel Approach to Enhance the Generalization Capability of the Hourly Solar Diffuse Horizontal Irradiance Models on Diverse Climates

Author

Listed:
  • Raghuram Kalyanam

    (Chair of Built Environment, Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Kaiserslautern, Paul-Ehrlich-Str. 14, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany)

  • Sabine Hoffmann

    (Chair of Built Environment, Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Kaiserslautern, Paul-Ehrlich-Str. 14, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany)

Abstract

Solar radiation data is essential for the development of many solar energy applications ranging from thermal collectors to building simulation tools, but its availability is limited, especially the diffuse radiation component. There are several studies aimed at predicting this value, but very few studies cover the generalizability of such models on varying climates. Our study investigates how well these models generalize and also show how to enhance their generalizability on different climates. Since machine learning approaches are known to generalize well, we apply them to truly understand how well they perform on different climates than they are originally trained. Therefore, we trained them on datasets from the U.S. and tested on several European climates. The machine learning model that is developed for U.S. climates not only showed low mean absolute error (MAE) of 23 W/m 2 , but also generalized very well on European climates with MAE in the range of 20 to 27 W/m 2 . Further investigation into the factors influencing the generalizability revealed that careful selection of the training data can improve the results significantly.

Suggested Citation

  • Raghuram Kalyanam & Sabine Hoffmann, 2020. "A Novel Approach to Enhance the Generalization Capability of the Hourly Solar Diffuse Horizontal Irradiance Models on Diverse Climates," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-16, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:18:p:4868-:d:415092
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/18/4868/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/18/4868/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elminir, Hamdy K. & Azzam, Yosry A. & Younes, Farag I., 2007. "Prediction of hourly and daily diffuse fraction using neural network, as compared to linear regression models," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1513-1523.
    2. Sengupta, Manajit & Xie, Yu & Lopez, Anthony & Habte, Aron & Maclaurin, Galen & Shelby, James, 2018. "The National Solar Radiation Data Base (NSRDB)," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 51-60.
    3. Saioa Etxebarria Berrizbeitia & Eulalia Jadraque Gago & Tariq Muneer, 2020. "Empirical Models for the Estimation of Solar Sky-Diffuse Radiation. A Review and Experimental Analysis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-23, February.
    4. Soares, Jacyra & Oliveira, Amauri P. & Boznar, Marija Zlata & Mlakar, Primoz & Escobedo, João F. & Machado, Antonio J., 2004. "Modeling hourly diffuse solar-radiation in the city of São Paulo using a neural-network technique," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 201-214, October.
    5. Beckman, William A. & Broman, Lars & Fiksel, Alex & Klein, Sanford A. & Lindberg, Eva & Schuler, Mattias & Thornton, Jeff, 1994. "TRNSYS The most complete solar energy system modeling and simulation software," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 486-488.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mondol, Jayanta Deb & Yohanis, Yigzaw G. & Norton, Brian, 2008. "Solar radiation modelling for the simulation of photovoltaic systems," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 1109-1120.
    2. Rodrigues, Eugénio & Gomes, Álvaro & Gaspar, Adélio Rodrigues & Henggeler Antunes, Carlos, 2018. "Estimation of renewable energy and built environment-related variables using neural networks – A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 959-988.
    3. Lou, Siwei & Li, Danny H.W. & Lam, Joseph C. & Chan, Wilco W.H., 2016. "Prediction of diffuse solar irradiance using machine learning and multivariable regression," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 367-374.
    4. Shamshirband, Shahaboddin & Mohammadi, Kasra & Khorasanizadeh, Hossein & Yee, Por Lip & Lee, Malrey & Petković, Dalibor & Zalnezhad, Erfan, 2016. "Estimating the diffuse solar radiation using a coupled support vector machine–wavelet transform model," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 428-435.
    5. Oh, Myeongchan & Kim, Chang Ki & Kim, Boyoung & Yun, Changyeol & Kim, Jin-Young & Kang, Yongheack & Kim, Hyun-Goo, 2022. "Analysis of minute-scale variability for enhanced separation of direct and diffuse solar irradiance components using machine learning algorithms," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    6. Dahmani, Kahina & Notton, Gilles & Voyant, Cyril & Dizene, Rabah & Nivet, Marie Laure & Paoli, Christophe & Tamas, Wani, 2016. "Multilayer Perceptron approach for estimating 5-min and hourly horizontal global irradiation from exogenous meteorological data in locations without solar measurements," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 267-282.
    7. Soulis, Konstantinos X. & Manolakos, Dimitris & Ntavou, Erika & Kosmadakis, George, 2022. "A geospatial analysis approach for the operational assessment of solar ORC systems. Case study: Performance evaluation of a two-stage solar ORC engine in Greece," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 116-128.
    8. Mohammadi, Kasra & Shamshirband, Shahaboddin & Petković, Dalibor & Khorasanizadeh, Hossein, 2016. "Determining the most important variables for diffuse solar radiation prediction using adaptive neuro-fuzzy methodology; case study: City of Kerman, Iran," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 1570-1579.
    9. Karakoti, Indira & Pande, Bimal & Pandey, Kavita, 2011. "Evaluation of different diffuse radiation models for Indian stations and predicting the best fit model," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 2378-2384, June.
    10. Abreu, Edgar F.M. & Canhoto, Paulo & Costa, Maria João, 2019. "Prediction of diffuse horizontal irradiance using a new climate zone model," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 28-42.
    11. Lazaros Aresti & Paul Christodoulides & Gregoris P. Panayiotou & Georgios Florides, 2020. "The Potential of Utilizing Buildings’ Foundations as Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Units from Solar Plate Collectors," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-14, May.
    12. Neupane, Deependra & Kafle, Sagar & Karki, Kaji Ram & Kim, Dae Hyun & Pradhan, Prajal, 2022. "Solar and wind energy potential assessment at provincial level in Nepal: Geospatial and economic analysis," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 278-291.
    13. Gueymard, Christian A. & Bright, Jamie M. & Lingfors, David & Habte, Aron & Sengupta, Manajit, 2019. "A posteriori clear-sky identification methods in solar irradiance time series: Review and preliminary validation using sky imagers," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 412-427.
    14. El-Sebaii, A.A. & Al-Hazmi, F.S. & Al-Ghamdi, A.A. & Yaghmour, S.J., 2010. "Global, direct and diffuse solar radiation on horizontal and tilted surfaces in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 568-576, February.
    15. Omoyele, Olalekan & Hoffmann, Maximilian & Koivisto, Matti & Larrañeta, Miguel & Weinand, Jann Michael & Linßen, Jochen & Stolten, Detlef, 2024. "Increasing the resolution of solar and wind time series for energy system modeling: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 189(PB).
    16. Vallianos, Charalampos & Candanedo, José & Athienitis, Andreas, 2023. "Application of a large smart thermostat dataset for model calibration and Model Predictive Control implementation in the residential sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 278(PA).
    17. Starke, Allan R. & Lemos, Leonardo F.L. & Boland, John & Cardemil, José M. & Colle, Sergio, 2018. "Resolution of the cloud enhancement problem for one-minute diffuse radiation prediction," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 472-484.
    18. Bracken, Cameron & Voisin, Nathalie & Burleyson, Casey D. & Campbell, Allison M. & Hou, Z. Jason & Broman, Daniel, 2024. "Standardized benchmark of historical compound wind and solar energy droughts across the Continental United States," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    19. Craig, Michael & Guerra, Omar J. & Brancucci, Carlo & Pambour, Kwabena Addo & Hodge, Bri-Mathias, 2020. "Valuing intra-day coordination of electric power and natural gas system operations," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    20. Zimmerman, Ryan & Panda, Anurag & Bulović, Vladimir, 2020. "Techno-economic assessment and deployment strategies for vertically-mounted photovoltaic panels," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 276(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:18:p:4868-:d:415092. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.