Evaluating Machine Learning and Deep Learning models for predicting Wind Turbine power output from environmental factors

This study presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) models for predicting Wind Turbine (WT) power output based on environmental variables such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, and wind direction. Along with Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), the following ML models were looked at: Linear Regression (LR), Support Vector Regressor (SVR), Random Forest (RF), Extra Trees (ET), Adaptive Boosting (AdaBoost), Categorical Boosting (CatBoost), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), and Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM). Using a dataset of 40,000 observations, the models were assessed based on R-squared, Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). ET achieved the highest performance among ML models, with an R-squared value of 0.7231 and a RMSE of 0.1512. Among DL models, ANN demonstrated the best performance, achieving an R-squared value of 0.7248 and a RMSE of 0.1516. The results show that DL models, especially ANN, did slightly better than the best ML models. This means that they are better at modeling non-linear dependencies in multivariate data. Preprocessing techniques, including feature scaling and parameter tuning, improved model performance by enhancing data consistency and optimizing hyperparameters. When compared to previous benchmarks, the performance of both ANN and ET demonstrates significant predictive accuracy gains in WT power output forecasting. This study's novelty lies in directly comparing a diverse range of ML and DL algorithms while highlighting the potential of advanced computational approaches for renewable energy optimization.