ECLIPSE : Envisioning CLoud Induced Perturbations in Solar Energy

TL;DR

ECLIPSE is a novel spatio-temporal neural network that predicts future solar irradiance and cloud cover from sky images, improving anticipation of sudden events and providing richer local irradiance information.

Contribution

The paper introduces ECLIPSE, a new neural network architecture that actively anticipates cloud-induced solar irradiance changes, addressing limitations of reactive deep learning models.

Findings

ECLIPSE reduces temporal lag in predictions.

The model accurately anticipates critical cloud events.

It generates realistic future sky images and irradiance maps.

Abstract

Efficient integration of solar energy into the electricity mix depends on a reliable anticipation of its intermittency. A promising approach to forecast the temporal variability of solar irradiance resulting from the cloud cover dynamics is based on the analysis of sequences of ground-taken sky images or satellite observations. Despite encouraging results, a recurrent limitation of existing deep learning approaches lies in the ubiquitous tendency of reacting to past observations rather than actively anticipating future events. This leads to a frequent temporal lag and limited ability to predict sudden events. To address this challenge, we introduce ECLIPSE, a spatio-temporal neural network architecture that models cloud motion from sky images to not only predict future irradiance levels and associated uncertainties, but also segmented images, which provide richer information on the local irradiance map. We show that ECLIPSE anticipates critical events and reduces temporal delay while generating visually realistic futures. The model characteristics and properties are investigated with an ablation study and a comparative study on the benefits and different ways to integrate auxiliary data into the modelling. The model predictions are also interpreted through an analysis of the principal spatio-temporal components learned during network training.