Comparative analysis of daily global solar radiation prediction using deep learning models inputted with stochastic variables

Photovoltaic power plant outputs depend on the daily global solar radiation (DGSR). The main issue with DGSR data is its lack of precision. The potential unavailability of DGSR data for several sites can be attributed to the high cost of measuring instruments and the intermittent nature of time series data due to equipment malfunctions. Therefore, DGSR prediction research is crucial nowadays to produce photovoltaic power. Different artificial neural network (ANN) models will give different DGSR predictions with varying levels of accuracy, so it is essential to compare the different ANN model inputs with various sets of meteorological stochastic variables. In this study, radial basis function neural network (RBFNN), long short-term memory neural network (LSTMNN), modular neural network (MNN), and transformer model (TM) are developed to investigate the performances of these algorithms for the DGSR prediction using different combinations of meteorological stochastic variables. These models employ five stochastic variables: wind speed, relative humidity, minimum, maximum, and average temperatures. The mean absolute relative error for the transformer model with input variables as average, maximum, and minimum temperatures is 1.98. ANN models outperform traditional models in predictive accuracy.