A quantum neural network model for short term wind speed forecasting using weather data

The use of computational intelligence has become commonplace for accurate wind speed and energy forecasting, however the energy-intensive processes involved in training and tuning stands as a critical issue for the sustainability of AI models. Quantum computing emerges as a key player in addressing this concern, offering a quantum advantage that could potentially accelerate computations or, more significantly, reduce energy consumption. It is a matter of debate if purely quantum machine learning models, as they currently stand, are capable of competing with the classical state of the art on relevant problems. We investigate the efficacy of quantum neural networks (QNNs) for wind speed nowcasting, comparing them to a baseline Multilayer Perceptron (MLP). Utilizing meteorological data from Bahia, Brazil, we develop a QNN tailored for up to six hours ahead wind speed prediction. Our analysis reveals that the QNN demonstrates competitive performance compared to MLP. We evaluate models using RMSE, Pearson’s R, and Factor of 2 metrics, emphasizing QNNs’ promising generalization capabilities and robustness across various wind prediction scenarios. This study is a seminal work on the potential of QNNs in advancing renewable energy forecasting, advocating for further exploration of quantum machine learning in sustainable energy research. • Proposal of new purely quantum neural network model for wind speed forecast. • Evaluation of the proposed model with unseen data in different locations. • The QNN model generalizes well and presents no under/overfitting. • QNN architecture has performance comparable to MLP model for wind speed forecasting.