Grey Wolf Optimization and Deep Belief Networks for Data-Efficient Forecasting in Smart Renewable Energy Systems

The integration of hybrid renewable energy systems (HRES) has introduced both opportunities and challenges in managing multisource power systems such as wind and solar. Accurate forecasting of HRES performance is critical to efficient planning and grid stability. This paper proposes a data efficient hybrid framework that combines Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) for feature selection with Deep Belief Networks (DBN) for predictive modeling. GWO effectively selects relevant features from high dimensional environmental and system parameters, reducing computational burden and enhancing learning performance. The DBN is then trained on the optimized input set to forecast system performance. Two public datasets capturing wind and solar power production across distinct geographic conditions were used for validation. The proposed model significantly outperforms conventional methods, achieving a mean square error of 0.0207, RMSE of 0.144, and an energy efficiency of 98.32%. These results demonstrate the framework’s potential for deployment in smart grid forecasting environments.