LSTM-Based Prediction of Solar Irradiance and Wind Speed for Renewable Energy Systems

Renewable energy systems like solar and wind power are the main source of sustainable energy production; however, their intermittent nature produces challenges for grid integration, so they require realistic forecast models. This study developed a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network model to predict solar irradiance and wind power over a 24 h horizon using a 240 h (10-day) dataset. The dataset, being hourly measurements of solar irradiance (W/m2) and wind speed (m/s), was divided and normalized into 193 sequences of 24 h each, with 80% for training and 20% for validation. Two LSTM models, each consisting of 100 hidden units, were trained using the Adam optimizer to predict the next 24 h for each of the variables using forget, input, and output gates to capture temporal dependencies. The results have shown that the model accurately forecasted solar irradiance with a clear day–night cycle, while forecasts of wind speed revealed higher variability, although the PV system was better than the wind system due to low wind speeds. The results reveal that the LSTM model can effectively predict renewable energy output by predicting the wind speed and Solar Irradiance, which are the main parameters that control the output power of wind turbines and PV power, respectively.