Energy Conversion and Management 212 (2020) 112766

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Energy Conversion and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

A day-ahead PV power forecasting method based on LSTM-RNN model and T

time correlation modification under partial daily pattern prediction
framework
⁎
Fei Wanga,b,c, Zhiming Xuana, Zhao Zhena,d, , Kangping Lia, Tieqiang Wange, Min Shie
a
Department of Electrical Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Baoding 071003, China
b
State Key Laboratory of Alternate Electrical Power System With Renewable Energy Sources (North China Electric Power University), Beijing 102206, China
c
Hebei Key Laboratory of Distributed Energy Storage and Microgrid, North China Electric Power University, Baoding 071003, China
d
State Key Lab of Power System, Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
e
Dispatch and Control Center, State Grid Hebei Electric Power Co., Ltd, Shijiazhuang 050021, China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Photovoltaic (PV) power generation is an effective means to realize solar energy utilization. Due to the natural
Photovoltaic power characteristics of random fluctuations in solar energy, the applications of PV power such as grid-connected PV
LSTM-RNN power plant, distributed PVs, and building integrated PVs will introduce new characteristics to the generation
Time correlation modification and load side of the power grid. Therefore, accurate day-ahead PV power forecasting is of great significance for
Daily pattern prediction
enabling grid manager to achieve PV power output data in advance and mitigate the influence of random
fluctuations. To tackle the deficiencies of conventional artificial intelligence (AI) modeling methods such as
overfitting problem and insufficient generalization ability to complex nonlinear modeling, a day-ahead PV
power forecasting model assembled by fusing deep learning modeling and time correlation principles under a
partial daily pattern prediction (PDPP) framework is proposed. First, an independent day-ahead PV power
forecasting model based on long-short-term memory recurrent neural network (LSTM-RNN) is established.
Second, a modification method is proposed to update the forecasting results of LSTM-RNN model based on time
correlation principles regarding different patterns of PV power in the forecasting day. Third, a partial daily
pattern prediction (PDPP) framework is proposed to provide accurate daily pattern prediction information of
particular days, which is used to guide the modification parameters. Simulation results show that the proposed
forecasting method with time correlation modification (TCM) is more accurate than the individual LSTM-RNN
model, and the performance of the forecasting model can be further improved for those days with accurate daily
pattern predictions under the proposed PDPP framework.

1. Introduction
1.1. Background
Population growth and economic development lead to a continuous
increase in the demand for electricity and global energy consumption.
Meanwhile, in the face of increasing depletion of limited fossil fuels and
demands for carbon emission reductions, it is of great significance to
develop the renewable power generation techniques [1]. Photovoltaic
(PV) power generation can convert solar energy into electric energy
through the Photovoltaic Effect, which is one of the most promising
renewable power generation technique [2]. However, the variability of
PV output power influenced by solar irradiance and temperature also
brings severe challenges to the operation of the power grid. The main
applications of PV power generation are large-scale grid-connected PV
power plants and distributed PVs [3,4]. Therefore, the stochastic fluc-
tuation characteristic of solar energy is introduced to both generation
side and load side of the power grid [5], thus limiting the absorption of
PV power while maintaining the balance of energy supply and demand
of power system [6,7].
To promote the absorption of PV power generation, multiple tech-
nologies have been developed and applied, including power flow op-
timization [8], peaking units, microgird [9], demand response [10,11],
energy storage [12], as well as PV power forecasting [13]. At present,
PV power forecasting is one of the most economical and feasible solu-
tions. Meanwhile, it is also important support for the above other

⁎
Corresponding author at: Department of Electrical Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Baoding 071003, China.
E-mail address: zhenzhao@ncepu.edu.cn (Z. Zhen).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2020.112766
Received 12 December 2019; Received in revised form 29 February 2020; Accepted 21 March 2020
Available online 10 April 2020
0196-8904/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
F. Wang, et al.
solutions [14,15]. The research of PV power forecasting mainly focus
on two kinds of models according to the forecasting time scale, ultra-
short-term/hourly-ahead PV power forecasting models and short-term/
day-ahead PV power forecasting models [16–18]. The former is mainly
used to guide the real-time dispatching of power grids [19], while the
latter is important data support for the formulation of day-ahead gen-
eration plans [20,21].
1.2. Literature review and motivation
At present, the primary methods for solar forecasting are persistence
model, autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model, regression
method, exponential smoothing method, physical method, artificial
neural network (ANN), support vector machine (SVM), and hybrid
model [22]. In [23–26], Time Series was used to predict solar energy
over a short-term, but the forecast results are not satisfactory when the
time scale and the output dimension increased. Satellite Images and Sky
Images can be applied to forecast solar irradiance over an ultra-short-
term based on the tracking and forecasting of cloud [2,27–30]. The
forecasting effect of these image-based methods is directly related to
the accuracy of image processing algorithms. While limited by the low
geographical resolution of meteorological satellite data and the small
coverage of ground-based sky image, the prediction accuracy and
practicability of this method should be further improved. NWP was
proposed in [31–34], for the use of predicting solar irradiance, how-
ever, at present, there are many restrictions on the NWP information
provided by the domestic meteorological department, which restricts its
application. Artificial neural network techniques are applied in [35–39]
to realize solar forecasting. For the above solar forecasting methods, the
nonlinear processing ability of ANN is beneficial to fitting the changing
law of solar power, which has achieved excellent results and been
widely used.
For the above existing researches, there are still some issues that
need to be further studied. Firstly, the deficiencies of conventional ar-
tificial intelligence modeling methods are still challenging problems to
tackle, and the rapid development of deep learning algorithm provides
a promising way to solve this problem [40]. Secondly, however, except
for the fluctuation of PV power affected by weather changes and cloud
movement, the solar energy also shows strong periodicity and reg-
ularity, so the comprehensive utilization of these two characteristics is
meaningful to increase forecasting accuracy [41,42]. Finally, is the
coupling between weather and electricity, and how to incorporate this
coupling into the forecasting model [43,44].
1.3. Contributions
Facing the technology update brought by deep learning theory, and
the issue of how to deal with the coupling relationship between the
randomness and periodicity of photovoltaic power under different
weather conditions, the primary research contents of this paper include
three parts. First is the research on an LSTM-RNN model for day-ahead
PV power forecasting based on deep learning techniques to improve the
Fig. 1. The structure of RNN.
2
Energy Conversion and Management 212 (2020) 112766
AI modeling based forecasting accuracy. Second is the research on a
time correlation modification (TCM) method based on time periodicity
and proximate similarity. Thirdly, considering the influence of different
weather conditions on PV power output, a partial daily pattern pre-
diction (PDPP) framework is proposed to improve the TCM process on
LSTM-RNN model outputs. The main contributions of this paper in-
clude:
(1) A novel day-ahead PV power forecasting method utilizes deep
learning technology (realized by LSTM-RNN) and time correlation
principle (embodied as annual periodicity and adjacent similarity)
is proposed.
(2) A partial daily pattern prediction (PDPP) framework is proposed to
improve the performance of the day-ahead forecasting model fur-
ther.
(3) Actual data is applied to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed
model.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces
the method of the proposed day-ahead PV power forecasting model.
Section 3 presents the simulation results and discussion, in which the
performances of the proposed forecasting model is evaluated. Finally,
conclusions are drawn in Section 4.
2. PV power day-ahead forecasting model under partial daily
pattern prediction framework
2.1. LSTM-RNN model
Traditional ANN tries to build a direct mapping between input
historical data and output forecast data to realize the forecasting ap-
proach. However, the lack of consideration of time correlation in data
sequence makes it unable to capture the relationship between data and
time for the ANN model, which restrict its application in time series
forecasting approaches. Therefore, the Recurrent Neural Network
(RNN) is proposed to overcome this disadvantage. By adding cyclical
connections to neurons, the sequence-to-sequence mapping between
input and output data can be built by RNN. Thus the output of each
time step is affected by the input of previous time step. Therefore, the
‘memory’ characteristic is realized by RNN [45,46].
The structure of RNN is shown in Fig. 1. Each node represents the
neuron of a single time step. The connection weight of input is W1, the
self-connection weight of each neuron is W2, the connection weight of
output is W3. The input data sequence enters network in turn according
to time steps, and the weight coefficient is utilized recycling.
The training process of RNN contains a forward pass and a back-
ward pass. The forward pass of an RNN is the same as that of a mul-
tilayer perceptron with a single hidden layer, except that activations
arrive at the hidden layer from both the current external input and the
hidden layer activations from the previous time steps. The backward
pass to calculate weight derivatives for RNN is called back propagation
through time (BPTT). Like standard backpropagation, BPTT consists of
F. Wang, et al. Energy Conversion and Management 212 (2020) 112766

I H C
a repeated application of the chain rule. The subtlety is that, for re-
current networks, the loss function depends on the activation of the alt = ∑ wil xit + ∑ whl bht−1 + ∑ wcl sct−1
i=1 h=1 c=1 (5)
hidden layer not only through its influence on the output layer but also
through its influence on the hidden layer at the next time step. blt = f (alt ) (6)
Consider a sequence x of length T as the input of an RNN with I
For forget gates the input and output values are:
input neurons, H hidden neurons, and K output neurons. Let x it be the
value of ith input at time t of x, and let aht and bht be the network input to I H C

hidden neurons j at time t and the activation of neurons j at time t. Then aφt = ∑ wiφ xit + ∑ whφ bht−1 + ∑ wcφ sct−1
i=1 h=1 c=1 (7)
for the hidden neurons in the forward pass we have:
I H bφt = f (aφt) (8)
aht = ∑ wih xit + ∑ w h′h bht−′ 1
i=1 h′= 1 (1) For memory cells the input, state, and output values are:
I H
And the calculation process of the backward pass can be described
by the following equations:
act = ∑ wic xit + ∑ whc bht−1
i=1 h=1 (9)
K H
⎛
δhi = θ′ (aht) ⎜ ∑ δkt whk + ∑ δht+′ 1 whh′⎞⎟ sct = bφt sct − 1 + blt g (act ) (10)
⎝ k=1 h′= 1 ⎠ (2)
bct = bwt h (sct ) (11)
∂L
δ tj = For output gates the input and output values are:
∂atj (3)
I H C

∂L
T
∂L ∂aj
t T a wt = ∑ wiw xit + ∑ whw bht−1 + ∑ wcw sct
= ∑ t
= ∑ δ tj bit i=1 h=1 c=1 (12)
∂wij t=1
∂aj ∂wij t=1 (4)
bwt = f (a wt ) (13)
An essential benefit of recurrent neural networks is their ability to
use contextual information when mapping between input and output In the backward pass, the weight coefficients of LSTM neurons are
sequences. Unfortunately, for standard RNN architectures, the range of updated according to the following equations:
context that can be in practice accessed is quite limited. During the C
training process, the sensitivity of RNN to information in earlier time δlt = f ′ (alt ) ∑ g (act ) εst
steps is decreasing. The RNN may even forget the most deleted input c=1 (14)
information. Then Long-Short-Term Memory (LSTM) is proposed to C
improve the performance of tradition RNN model. δφt = f ′ (aφt) ∑ sct−1 εst
The structure of LSTM based neuron is shown in Fig. 2. In LSTM- c=1 (15)
RNN, a set of recurrently connected subnets, known as memory blocks
δct = blt g ′ (act ) εst (16)
are applied. Each block contains one or more self-connected memory
cells and three multiplicative units called input, output and forget gates. C
These gate units can provide continuous analogs of write, read and reset δwt = f ′ (a wt ) ∑ h (sct ) εct
operations for the memory cells. When input gate is activated, input c=1 (17)
data will be saved in the memory cell, when output gate is activated, where
the data will be transmitted to the next neurons, when forget gate is
∂L
activated, the information in the memory cell will be deleted. There- δ=
fore, the long short-term memory of input data sequence is realized ∂a
according to the activations of different gates [47]. wij – Connection weight from node i to node j.atj – The input of node j at
The LSTM based neurons are also trained through forward and time t.btj – The activation value of node j at time t.l, φ , c, w – The index
backward passes, and then applying the BPTT method to update the of the input gate, the forget get, the memory cell and the output
neuron weight. Based on equations (1) to (4), the calculation process gate.wcl, wcφ, wcw – The peephole weights from the memory cell to the
for LSTM neuron training can be written as follows. input, forget, and output gates.sct – The state of the memory cell at time
In forward pass, for input gates the input and output values are: t. f – The activation function of each gate. g , h – The activation function

Fig. 2. The structure of LSTM based neuron.

3
F. Wang, et al. Energy Conversion and Management 212 (2020) 112766

Fig. 3. The annual periodicity and adjacent similarity of extraterrestrial solar irradiance.

Fig. 4. Normalized photovoltaic power curve for 4 consecutive days.

of the memory cell input and output.I – The number of input.K – The after (positive) forecast moment of the previous ith year is ri, j . The
number of output.H – The number of memory cells in hidden layers.G – correlation coefficient between r0,0 and ri, j can be calculated according
The total number of input values in hidden layers. For LSTM G = 4H.L to the following formula.
– The loss function.
Cov (r0,0, ri, j )
C (r0,0, ri, j ) =
Var (r0,0 ) Var (ri, j ) (18)
2.2. Time correlation modification
The value of C (r0,0, ri, j ) reflects the similarity in PV power output
between forecasting day and the historical reference day. Ideally, if
Under the influence of the earth’s revolution around the sun, the
both forecasting day and reference day are sunny, then the value of
daily extraterrestrial solar irradiance of a particular location presents
C (r0,0, ri, j ) will be very close to 1. However, if the weather condition in
time correlation characteristics, which embodied as annual periodicity
reference day is different from forecasting day, the transformation
and adjacent similarity [48]. Here the annual periodicity means that the
processes from extraterrestrial solar irradiance to surface solar irra-
daily extraterrestrial solar irradiance data in the same ahargana of
diance to PV power will also be different, then the value of C (r0,0, ri, j )
different years are also the same because of the permanent comparative
will be smaller than 1. On the other hand, the values of i and j also
position of the sun and the earth. The adjacent similarity means that for
affect C (r0,0, ri, j ) .
the neighboring days, their daily irradiance data are close to each other
For example, Fig. 4 shows the normalized photovoltaic power curve
as the relative positions of the sun and the earth are similar. As shown
for 4 consecutive days. It can be seen that there are three weather
in Fig. 3.
conditions in the 4 days: cloudy or rainy, sunny, and partly cloudy.
The power output of PV is the electric energy converted from the
Then we calculate the values of C (r0,0, ri, j ) between each day’s data as
surface solar irradiance it received, which is determined by the corre-
shown in Table 1. It can be seen that the calculation results conform to
sponding extraterrestrial irradiance and weather conditions. Because of
the above description.
the close correlation between surface and extraterrestrial irradiance
According to the above analysis, the formula of C (r0,0, ri, j ) used in
under clear sky weather, the PV power also presents a similar annual
this paper can also be defined as
periodicity and adjacent similarity with extraterrestrial irradiance.
When the weather is fine, the PV power output is closed to that of the Ti, j Si, j
Ci, j = C (r0,0, ri, j ) =
same historical periods and the approaching dates, or in another word, Vi, j V0,0 (19)
their changing laws are very similar. Hence, the reference value of PV
power output in the forecasting day can be calculated by using the PV where
power data of the same historical periods and the approaching dates 1 1
Ti . j =
according to the time correlation characteristic. (k1 i + 1)2 (k2 j + 1)2 (20)
Suppose the daily PV power data series in the forecasting day is r0,0 ,
and the daily PV power data series in the jth day before (negative) or Si, j = f (wi, j, w0,0) (21)

4
F. Wang, et al.
Table 1
Forecasting accuracy of different models.
Day 1 (cloudy Day 2 Day 3
or rainy) (sunny) (sunny)
Day 1 (cloudy or 1 0.9610 0.9615
rainy)
Day 2 (sunny) 0.9610 1 0.9992
Day 3 (sunny) 0.9615 0.9992 1 0.9844
Day 4 (partly 0.9326 0.9846 0.9844
cloudy)
Vi, j = g (wi, j )
Ti, j represents the time correlation coefficient which is determined
by the value of i and j , Si, j represents the meteorological similarity
coefficient which is determined by the weather type of reference day
wi, j and forecasting day w0,0 , Vi, j and V0,0 represent the randomness
coefficients of the reference day and forecasting day which is de-
termined by the weather type of the corresponding day.
To determine the reference value of PV power output at a specific
time, the periodicity scale coefficient T and similarity scale coefficient L
are defined to describe the scope of data that we need. The periodicity
scale coefficient T determines the years of historical data of the forecast
time of towards forward and the similarity scale coefficient L determine
the days of historical data at the forecast time of towards forward and
back. T and L are both positive integers. Then according to the de-
termined values of scale coefficients, a reference matrix R of PV power
at a definitive forecast moment can be created using historical data.
Taking T = 3, L = 2 as an example, the created reference matrix R is
shown by the following formula:
⎡ {r1, −2} {r1, −1} {r1,0} {r1,1} {r1,2} ⎤
R = [ri, j ]3 × 5 = ⎢ {r2, −2} {r2, −1} {r2,0} {r2,1} {r2,2} ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ {r3, −2} {r3, −1} {r3,0} {r3,1} {r3,2} ⎥
⎣ ⎦
Then according to the reference matrix R, the reference PV power
data value Eref can be calculated as the average of all the elements in
matrix R.
T L
∑i = 1 ∑ j =−L ri, j Ci, j
Eref =
T L
∑i = 1 ∑ j =−L Ci, j
Therefore, for a particular day, the reference PV power data can be
calculated using the above formulas determined by the periodicity scale
coefficient and the similarity scale coefficient. As a result of average
irradiance, the value of Eref can characterize the primary trend of ir-
radiance, which can either be used as an individual PV power forecast
result or modify the forecast results of other machine learning method.
2.3. Partial daily pattern prediction
Section 2.1 and 2.2 provide two approaches to forecast future PV
power. Then to obtain the final day-ahead forecast results, the outputs
of the LSTM-RNN model need to be modified by the time correlation
model using a fusion model. Depending on different weather condi-
tions, the variation patterns of daily PV power sequence will change
correspondingly [49]. Therefore, multiple classified fusion methods
should also be applied by targeting different daily patterns.
To recognize the daily pattern of PV power in the forecasting day,
the DPP model is applied. The basic framework of the DPP model is
shown in Fig. 5. Firstly, historical daily PV power data are clustered
into different groups to achieve the daily pattern label of PV power for
each day. Secondly, according to the daily PV power data with daily
pattern labels, a daily pattern (DP) classification model and multiple
day-ahead PV power forecasting models are trained. The inputs of
classification model are daily PV power data and the output is the
Energy Conversion and Management 212 (2020) 112766
pattern label of the day. For forecasting models, the inputs are previous
daily PV power data and the outputs are daily PV power data of the
Day 4 (partly forecasting day. These forecasting models can be realized using stan-
cloudy) dard forecasting techniques such as ANN, ARIMA, and SVM. Thirdly,
these multiple standard models are used to forecast the daily PV power
0.9326
data, and then the classification model is applied to recognize the daily
0.9846
pattern of forecasting day according to these forecasted PV power data.
Fourthly, we vote for the final daily pattern of the forecasting day ac-
1 cording to all the predicted patterns.
However, according to the above framework, the accuracy of the
predicted daily pattern of the forecasting day cannot be guaranteed in
actual applications due to the model errors. A wrong predicted daily
(22)
pattern will, in turn, reduce the final forecasting accuracy of PV power.
To solve this problem, on the one hand, we can apply more high-per-
formance forecasting models, on the other hand, we can strict the
voting session. Therefore, only when all the forecast results of different
models are classified as the same daily pattern, the DPP results can be
applied. Otherwise, we will give up the predicted daily pattern.
Therefore, the DPP framework is improved to a partial daily pattern
prediction (PDPP) framework. The detail process of the PDPP for PV
power is shown in Fig. 6.
2.4. Day-ahead PV power ensemble forecasting model
The proposed ensemble model consists of two sub forecasting
models, respectively LSTM-RNN model and time correlation model,
which are integrated through the PDPP framework.
The output of LSTM-RNN model and time correlation model are
both the data sequence of daily PV power in the forecasting day. While
for LSTM-RNN model, the input data are the PV power value sequence
in the previous three days, and for time correlation model, the output
data are calculated according to the determined scale coefficients using
historical PV power data.
In a primary technology route, the PV power in the target day is first
(23)
forecasted by the LSTM-RNN model. Then the reference data of PV
power is calculated using time correlation model. Next, a time corre-
lation modification (TCM) process is implemented on LSTM-RNN model
outputs using the reference data. However, considering the changeable
weather conditions and the high requirement of forecasting accuracy,
the PDPP program is further applied to predict the daily weather pat-
(24) tern of the forecasting day based on the primary technology route. Then
we can optimize the TCM process according to the predicted daily
pattern of the forecasting day. The complete procedure is shown in
Fig. 7.
3. Simulation and discussion
3.1. Data
The simulation data used in this paper is downloaded on the in-
ternet from the Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL), Global
Monitoring Division website. The solar data records are collected from
2011 to 2016 at the Desert Rock station in Nevada. Before simulation,
the time resolution of direct normal irradiance (DNI) and temperature
data has been adjusted to 15 min to fit the forecasting model.
The output power of PV mainly depends on the value of solar ir-
radiance and temperature, and can be calculated according to the fol-
lowing formula [50,51]:
P = ηr SGT [1 − β (Tm − T0)] (25)
where P is PV power output, ηr is the reference module efficiency, S is
the aperture surface area of PV module, β is temperature coefficients of
PV modules, Tm and T0 are average PV module temperature and re-
ference values of temperature respectively, and finally, GT is surface
solar radiance flux on module plane.
Setting T0 = 25, β = 0.39% , formula can be rewritten as:
5
F. Wang, et al. Energy Conversion and Management 212 (2020) 112766

Fig. 5. The framework of daily pattern prediction (DPP).

P = ηr SGT [1 − 0.0039(Tm − 25)] (26) To calculate the value of GT according to the downloaded DNI data,
the solar altitude angle H and solar azimuth as are needed. The two
In formula, GT and Tm can be obtained and calculated according to
parameters can be calculated by the following formulas:
the ESRL website data, other parameters can be neglected through
normalization.

Fig. 6. The detail process of the PDPP model.

6
F. Wang, et al.
Fig. 7. The procedure of the proposed ensemble PV power day-ahead forecasting model.
n + 284
δ = 23.45 × sin ⎛360 × ⎞
⎝ 365 ⎠ (27)
ω = 15 × (ST − 12) (28)
sinH = sinφsinδ + cosφcosδ cosω (29)
cosδ sinω
sinas =
cosH (30)
where δ is solar declination angle, n is ahargana, ω is solar hour angle,
ST is true solar time.
In practice, the angle and location of the module plane of PV is
available, and when the solar altitude angle H and solar azimuth as are
achieved, the incidence of solar irradiance relative to the module plane
will be available as well. Therefore, the value of GT can be calculated
according to the DNI data and the incidence of solar irradiance. Then
based on the downloaded DNI data, temperature data and formula (20)
~ (25), the theoretical value of normalized PV power can be achieved.
3.2. Experimental design
The last 300 days data in 2016 are selected as the forecasting days
to test the performance of the proposed model. For LSTM-RNN model
and DPP model, the training data is the PV power sequence in the
previous 700 days (training days) before forecasting days. For time
correlation model, the data from 2011 to 2015 is applied to generate
the reference value.
The simulation in this paper contains four steps.
In the first step, the performance of LSTM-RNN forecasting model is
evaluated comparing with three standard forecasting models: back
propagation neural network (BPNN) model, support vector machines
(SVM) model, and persistent model.
In the second step, the time correlation model is applied to modify
the output of the above four models using a global fusion model to
explore the influence of annual periodicity and adjacent similarity on
PV forecasting. Here the fusion model is realized by weighted sum-
mation.
In the third step, the PDPP framework is applied. The weight
coefficients in fusion models for different DP are optimized and the
effectiveness of this optimization is tested as well.
In the fourth step, we compared the accuracy of the complete
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Energy Conversion and Management 212 (2020) 112766
proposed PV power day-ahead forecasting model with all the reference
models.
Three error indices, root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute
error (MAE), and Correlation Coefficient (COR), are applied to evaluate
the model performance according to forecast results. The official
functions of the three error indices are:
n
∑i = 1 (yi − 
yi )2
RMSE =
n (31)
n
∑i = 1 (yi − 
yi )
MAE =
n (32)
Cov (y, y )̂
COR = × 100%
V (y ) V (y )̂ (33)
Where y is the actual value, y ̂ is the forecasted value, and i is the index
value of data.
Initially the units of RMSE and MAE are the same with y . However,
as the data used in this paper is normalized PV power, the RMSE and
MAE are nondimensionalized just like the COR.
RMSE is one of the most commonly used accuracy indices, the
power two calculation in its formula can increase the influence of
massive deviation results on the final value of the index, which makes it
usually more reliable than MAE. COR is used to evaluate the correlation
between two sequences, as COR cannot efficiently reflect the deviation
between the data, it makes sense only when other indices like RMSE
and MAE are close.
3.3. Results
A. Periodicity and similarity scale coefficient of PV power modification
The reference value to modify PV power depends on the setting of
annual periodicity and adjacent similarity coefficients. To find out the
optimal coefficients for PV power modification, the RMSE between
actual PV power data and the reference value of training days that
calculated with different scale coefficients are shown in Fig. 8.
It can be seen that with the increasing of similarity scale coefficient
and periodicity scale confident, the RMSE between actual PV power and
reference value first declines steadily and then keeps consistent.
F. Wang, et al.
Fig. 8. Accuracy of time correlation model with different scale coefficients.
Therefore, the periodicity scale confident T and similarity scale coeffi-
cient L are set as 5 and 10 in the following calculations of the fore-
casting days.
B. Performance testing for LSTM-RNN model and time correlation
model
In this paper, LSTM-RNN model is applied as the primary fore-
casting approach in our proposed PV power day-ahead forecasting
model. To evaluate the performance of LSTM-RNN model, we compare
this model with the persistent model and two commonly used artificial
intelligence (AI) based forecasting models, respectively BPNN and SVM
models. For all the three AI-based models (LSTM-RNN, BPNN, and
SVM), the inputs are PV power data in the previous three days of the
forecasting day and the outputs are PV power data in the forecasting
day. For the persistent model, we treat the previous day’s PV power
data as the forecasted value directly. The forecast results and error of
the four models is shown in Fig. 9. In Fig. 9(a), the forecasted nor-
malized PV power curves of different models are shown in different
colors. In Fig. 9(b), the error between forecasting value and the actual
value corresponds to each color area. The calculated accuracy statistics
are listed in Table 2.
It can be seen that all the machine learning based models achieve a
better forecasting accuracy than the persistent model. Among machine
learning based models, the performance of the BPNN model is the worst
and is very close to the persistent model, which may due to the high
dimension of input data which weakening the fitting and generalization
ability of the BPNN model. The area of color region corresponding to
persistence and BPNN models are also larger than that of SVM and
LSTM-RNN models as shown in Fig. 9(b).
When the forecasted values of PV power are achieved by different
models, the time correlation model is applied to modify the forecast
results of LSTM-RNN, BPNN, SVM, and persistent models according to
the annual periodicity and adjacent similarity of PV power.
The reference value Eref is first calculated according to historical
data, then to ensure the same modification degree of the four models for
the convenience of comparison, here we directly calculate the average
of forecasted value and reference value Eref as modified PV power
value, thus the weight coefficients of forecasted value and reference
value are 0.5 and 0.5 without optimization. As shown in Table 3, it can
be seen that the accuracy of the revised results has been significantly
improved, which verified the effectiveness of the time correlation based
modification method. Figs. 10–12 show the improvement of four fore-
casting models by time correlation modification on different error in-
dices.
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Energy Conversion and Management 212 (2020) 112766
C. Improvement of PDPP
According to the above comparison of PV power forecasting models,
the advancement of LSTM-RNN model and the effectiveness of mod-
ification method using time correlation model are verified. Then the
following simulation is carried out to test the performance of PDPP
framework further.
In this part, the daily pattern of PV power is classified into two
categories. The numbers of days of each pattern in training set and
testing set are shown in Table 4.
Then according to the DPP results of the 300 forecasting days, the
confusion matrix is drawn as Table 5 to show the accuracy of DPP
model.
It can be seen that there are 105 days predicted as pattern A while
99 of them are correct, and there are 195 days predicted as pattern B
while 120 of them are correct. The prediction accuracy of pattern A and
pattern B are 94.3% and 64.5% respectively, among which the accuracy
rate of pattern A is relatively high. However, the wrong predicted
pattern would lead to a wrong selection of weight coefficient, which
will severely disrupt the accuracy of final forecast results. Therefore,
the accuracy rate at 94.3% of pattern A is still unusable.
To further improve the prediction accuracy of daily PV power pat-
tern, the outputs of DPP model that are predicted as pattern A are fil-
tered. Only the days with all votes as pattern A are selected as predicted
pattern A days, other days are concerned with the uncertain pattern.
Then after the filtering process, only 26 days left as pattern A prediction
days. For these accurate pattern-A days, the weight coefficients are
optimized using historical data in pattern A days. Other days will apply
the weight coefficients determined by the whole historical data set.
Fig. 13 shows the forecast results of the proposed ensemble model in
different forecasting stages. Then in Table 6 and Figs. 14–16, the ac-
curacy indices of forecast results in different stages are illustrated. In
the first stage, the PV power data is forecasted only by the LSTM-RNN
model, of which the model performance has been verified in previous
simulations. In the second stage, the outputs of LSRM-RNN model are
modified by time correlation model. The forecasting accuracy improved
significantly at this stage. Then the PDPP is applied and we compile the
statistics of forecasting accuracy for all the testing days and only for
accurate pattern-A days. It can be seen that, due to the limited number
of accurate pattern-A days, there is hardly any accuracy improvement
of PDPP applied forecast results for all the testing days compared with
stage 2. However, if we focus on the accurate pattern-A days, the utility
of PDPP becomes very obvious.
F. Wang, et al. Energy Conversion and Management 212 (2020) 112766

Fig. 9. Forecast results of different models.

Table 2 3.4. Discussion

Forecasting accuracy of different models.
LSTM-RNN BPNN SVM Persistence The LSTM-RNN model and time correlation model can be both used
for day-ahead PV forecasting. The former belongs to artificial in-
RMSE 8.83% 10.31% 9.80% 10.60% telligence technique which tries to learn the mapping relationship be-
MAE 4.66% 5.27% 4.83% 4.88%
tween data in the forecasting day and the previous days before the
COR 92.38% 90.52% 90.54% 89.87%
forecasting day. The latter belongs to the statistical method, and the
calculated value is determined by historical data in previous years.
Table 3 Therefore, the results of time correlation model are more close to the
Forecasting accuracy of different models after time correlation modification. actual data in trend, while the LSTM-RNN model is more about trying to
track the fluctuations of PV power output. Then the ensemble model
LSTM-RNN BPNN SVM Persistent
achieved higher accuracy than both individual models as it combines
RMSE 6.29% 6.86% 6.44% 6.70% the advantages of them.
MAE 2.78% 3.17% 2.84% 2.93% DPP model is used to predict the pattern of the forecasting day so
COR 96.19% 95.46% 95.81% 95.68% that an optimal group of weight coefficients can be selected to calculate
the final results using the output data of LSTM-RNN model and time
correlation model. If apply the DPP model in the ensemble PV power
day-ahead forecasting model, the accuracy of DPP would be a key factor

9
F. Wang, et al. Energy Conversion and Management 212 (2020) 112766

Fig. 10. Improvement of four models on RMSE.

for forecasting accuracy. On the one hand, accurate DPP can help fur-
ther improve the accuracy of the ensemble PV power day-ahead fore-
casting model, on the other hand, once the predicted pattern of the
forecasting day is incorrect, the final results of ensemble model would
be utterly wrong. So far, the overall accuracy of the proposed DPP
model cannot be guaranteed according to our existing research results.
Therefore, the PDPP framework is proposed to mitigate this problem.
According to the experimental design and simulation results in
section 3.2 and 3.3, the improvement of forecasting accuracy comes
from two stages. The initial forecasting results is achieved by LSTM-
RNN model, then by calculating the reference value using function (24)
and the mean value of initial forecasting results and reference value, the
forecasting accuracy is first improved, as shown in section 3.3 part B. In
the second stage, PDPP is applied to predict the daily pattern of the
forecasting day, and the weight coefficients of initial forecasting results
and reference value is updated to further improve the accuracy, as
shown in section 3.3 part C. After the two stages improvement, the final
forecasting accuracy in the experiment is obtained.
4. Conclusion
A novel ensemble day-ahead PV power forecasting model

Fig. 11. Improvement of four models on MAE.

10
F. Wang, et al. Energy Conversion and Management 212 (2020) 112766

Fig. 12. Improvement of four models on COR.

Table 4 Table 6
Pattern distribution in training and testing days. The accuracy of results in different forecasting stages.
Pattern A Pattern B Forecasting stage RMSE MAE COR

Days in training set 313 387 LSTM-RNN forecasting 8.83% 4.66% 92.38%
Days in testing set 174 126 Modified by time correlation model 6.29% 2.78% 96.19%
PDPP applied forecast results for all the testing days 6.27% 2.77% 96.21%
PDPP applied forecast results for accurate pattern-A 5.68% 2.35% 97.76%
days
Table 5
Confusion matrix of the DPP results.
Target pattern Accuracy combining AI technique with the statistical method is proposed in this
paper. The power output of PV has both periodic and random volatility
A B
due to the annual and daily changing regulation of solar energy and the
Predicted pattern A 99 6 94.3% uncertainty of weather conditions. Therefore, in the ensemble model,
B 75 120 61.5% the LSTM-RNN model based deep learning technique is first applied to
Accuracy 56.9% 95.2% 73.0% track the fluctuation problem of PV power, then time correlation

Fig. 13. Forecast results of the proposed ensemble model in different forecasting stages.

11
F. Wang, et al. Energy Conversion and Management 212 (2020) 112766

Fig. 14. The RMSE of forecast results in different stages of the model. Forecasting stage: 1. LSTM-RNN forecasting; 2. Modified by time correlation model; 3. PDPP
applied forecast results for all the testing days; 4. PDPP applied forecast results for accurate pattern-A days.

principle is applied to modify the output of LSTM-RNN model according
to the trend and regularity reflected by historical data.
As the proportion of periodic and random part of PV power may
change with days under different weather conditions, a DPP model is
proposed to predict the pattern of forecasting day, so that the optimal
parameters for TCM process can be selected to further improve the
accuracy of the proposed day-ahead PV power forecasting. However,
since the non-guaranteed performance of the DPP model, we further
proposed the PDPP framework to integrate the LSTM-RNN model and
time correlation model.
The novelty of the work lies in combining deep learning technology
and time correlation principle to tackle the deficiencies of conventional
artificial intelligence (AI) modeling methods such as overfitting pro-
blem and insufficient generalization ability to complex nonlinear
modeling, and applying the PDPP framework to incorporate the cou-
pling between weather and electricity into the forecasting model.
Simulation results using actual data verified the performance of LSTM-
RNN model and TCM method, the effectiveness of the PDPP framework
for partial accurate pattern days is also confirmed.
Author contributions
All authors have worked on this manuscript together and all authors
have read and approved the final manuscript.
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare that the grant, scholarship, and/or funding
mentioned in the Acknowledgments section do not lead to any conflict
of interest. Additionally, the authors declare that there is no conflict of
interest regarding the publication of this manuscript.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Fei Wang: Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing. Zhiming
Xuan: Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Zhao Zhen:
Methodology, Writing - original draft. Kangping Li: Investigation.
Tieqiang Wang: Resources. Min Shi: Validation.

Fig. 15. The MAE of forecast results in different stages of the model. Forecasting stage: 1. LSTM-RNN forecasting; 2. Modified by time correlation model; 3. PDPP
applied forecast results for all the testing days; 4. PDPP applied forecast results for accurate pattern-A days.

12
F. Wang, et al.
Fig. 16. The COR of forecast results in different stages of the model. Forecasting stage: 1. LSTM-RNN forecasting; 2. Modified by time correlation model; 3. PDPP
applied forecast results for all the testing days; 4. PDPP applied forecast results for accurate pattern-A days.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of
China (Technology and application of wind power / photovoltaic power
prediction for promoting renewable energy consumption,
2018YFB0904200) and eponymous Complement S&T Program of State
Grid Corporation of China (SGLNDKOOKJJS1800266).
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