RIPHAH INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

ISLAMABAD

Synopsis for Degree of √ M. S./M. Phil. Ph.D.

Part-I

Name of Student Iqra Munawar

Department Computer Science
Registration No. 402718
Name of (i) Research Supervisor Dr. Ayesha Kashif
(ii) Co-Supervisor Dr. Muhammad Kashif Shahzad
Engr. Muhammad Awais Mahboob
Members of Supervisory Committee

1. Prof. Dr. Faqir M Bhatti

2. Dr. Khawaja Muhammad Fahd
3. Dr. Ayesha Kashif
Title of Research Proposal Improving Weather and Irradiance Profiling for
Solar Generation Yield Assessment
Introduction
The electrical energy supply and demand gap results in forced load shedding and in worst
scenario blackout across Pakistan. This can be controlled if sudden spikes in energy
demand are reduced. The best way is to use alternate renewable energy (a.k.a. sustainable
energy technologies) resources primarily at the consumer end. Moreover, increasing
environmental problems (CO2 emissions etc.) and decreasing fuel resources at rapid rate
has also attracted significant attention to the renewable energy. The share of renewable
energies in the global power sector is expected to reach 22.5% by 2020 [13]. There are
different modern sources of renewable energy, such as solar and wind. We use solar
energy in two forms, thermal and photovoltaic. The photovoltaic (PV) power technology
uses semiconductor cells of several square sizes that convert sunlight into electricity [1]
using different equipment. The photovoltaic technology usage is limited due to its greater
investment costs per unit generation. Other solar technologies like wind and thermal
power systems have some drawbacks like, they create pollution or noise and need heavy
maintenance and supervision as well.

Page 1 of 11
At present Pakistan is facing an awful shortfall of electricity and multiple energy crises of
about 7000 MW for many years. One of the cheapest alternate energy resources that must
be exploited in Pakistan is solar energy through solar PV panels. The biggest advantage of
these solar PV panels is that they can meet with the individual load demand and can be
installed on the rooftops for domestic as well as commercial use. The NEPRA (National
Electric Power Regulatory Authority) has approved license issuance for domestic and
commercial consumers in Pakistan for net metering where excess generated electricity is
injected back to the Grid and consumers are paid by the respective distribution
companies.
The key advantage is the ability to keep sudden demand increase particularly in summers,
which result in blackout and forced load shedding. This also requires a significant
financial investment associated with this installation. Consequently, return on investment
(ROI) analysis is needed at the consumer end that results in not only in the number of
years in which the invested amount may be recovered but also the Solar Generation Yield
Assessment (SGYE) at the intended installation site. The accuracy of SGYE depends on
accurate solar and weather profiling. In our proposed work, we shall identify and/or
extend the most appropriate machine learning technique for accurate weather profiling.

Literature review
The proposed work mainly concentrates on solar PV panels yield prediction using
weather forecasting and return on investment analysis. A number of papers have been
found on solar energy and photovoltaic systems, some of the works have been done using
weather forecast profile and sun profile. Our prediction will be based not only on weather
profiles but also the irradiance profiling. Therefore, a detailed study has been done in the
field of accurate weather forecasting system. A review of the forecasting mechanisms and
PV power output is given below. [1-12, 14-20, 22]

Jager et al. [1] in their book solar energy fundamentals and technology describes
meteorological effects on the PV power output. They developed a thermal model to
evaluate the major effects of meteorology parameters on the final temperature of the PV
module High level of radiations may cause solar temperature to rise above standard
o
temperature (provided by solar manufacturers) that is 25 C . Entire model is considered as
a uniform piece at a Temperature TM and contributions include Heat received from the
Sun, Convective heat exchange, Radiative heat and conductive heat transfer. Others
parameters include Sky temperature evaluation, Wind speed and absorptivity and
emissivity of the module. The model is then evaluated using all above parameters. High
temperatures reduce the performance of a solar cell. The overall reduction of power
output shows that moderate and sunny climates are the best to install a solar system. The
final efficiency depends on the level of irradiance and temperature.

In book wind and Solar power system the author R. Patel [2] described the major factors
influencing the electrical design of the solar array. And it includes sun intensity, sun angle,
load matching for maximum power and operating temperature. The photoconversion
2
efficiency is quite the same (between the range of 500 W/m and 1000

Page 2 of 11
 2
W/m ) on a sunny or cloudy day. On a cloudy day we get a lower output because of the
lower solar radiation received by the cell. According to cosine law cell generates no
o
power above 85 although the law predicts 7.5% power generation. Also shadow and
increased temperature effects the performance greatly. On a slightly cloudy day, the
efficient PV panel can output up to 80% and 30% even on fully cloudy day. The load
matching factor is also important because as the load increase to R2 the operation point
also moves to A2 in order to balance the load.

Durrani et al. [3] predicted PV yield using an irradiance forecast model in their work. The
proposed forecast model is based on multiple feed-forward neural networks to predict the
24 hours ahead yield. They have taken historical meteorological variables (temperature,
pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, sunshine duration and cloudiness) from the
Germany Weather Station in order to train the model for the prediction of future GHI.
Using past years of weather data (from 2010 to 2015), two subsets was formed, first set
was used for designing and training and second for validation and testing. Three parts of
PV model were developed in MATLAB such as irradiance forecast model, the PV
temperature model and PV electric model. The models predicted the GHI with a MAPE of
3% on a sunny day but the error increased to 23% on a cloudy or partly cloudy day. The
overall error of the model is high (18% to 26 %) and can be improved.

In her research work Caroline Carl [4] calculated solar photovoltaic power potential of the
residential rooftops using solar irradiance data obtained from some modeling tools and
used existing mathematical formulation of PV power systems. Since irradiance is the
major factor in calculating solar output but it is also important to select suitable area. She
used remote sensing method and geographical information to identify annual potential for
the specific location. The sun data was processed and obtained from LiDAR and Esri GIS
modelling toolset. The data collection method adopted in this work is too expensive
because remote sensing has high operating cost. Although the data collected through the
above models have high accuracy but still such kind of technique is only better for
specific or targeted location. The performance degraded at higher temperature and sun
angles.

Jhie Shi et al. [5] forecasted PV output using the weather classification and support vector
machine algorithm. One day ahead prediction is made taking single PV xyz station in
China. The methodology adopted in the said paper was four classes of weather states such
as cloudy, sunny, foggy and rainy. And bases on the local weather report the
corresponding model of SVM is applied against the relative class. This approach is only
reliable for limited stations and limited forecasting and will fail where we want
predictions on bigger scale.

Jawaid et al. [8] correlated artificial neural techniques against the regression methods to
forecast the daily solar power. They used past ten year’s datasets based on hourly values
of weather variables to predict solar irradiance and it relation with weather conditions.
They measured different weather values for the 10 years in order to validate the
methodology with the help of cross validation and split validation techniques. This study
gives better results but ignore the factor of extreme weather and long term prediction

Page 3 of 11
mechanism.

In shruthi .D et al. [6] predicted the monthly global solar irradiations for Indian stations
using Artificial neural network based prediction. They applied ANN model to 23 different
Indian stations having different Climatic conditions. ANN models was trained against the
input data and inputs were backpropogated if it produces more than 10% error. Since the
accuracy depends on the input and data. The input parameters identified include (lat, long,
max temperature, min temperature, altitude, Sunshine hours, extra-terrestrial radiation and
clearance index) for different cities. The output was given by the dividing the actual solar
radiations to the extraterrestrial radiations.

E. hassan et al. [7] used ambient temperature based model in order to estimate global
solar radiation as sometimes the sunshine data is not available. The model developed
using past years’ dataset of GSR for ten specific locations in Egypt. The prediction of
twenty different models were compared with the measure data of global sola radiations.
And it was evaluated that most of the models performed good after comparing it with the
sunshine based accurate model. The values were calculated using in house computer
program that was developed in C#. And the models were validated for two coastal
locations where the prediction was successful then the general technique.

Alanazy et al. [10] have performed Long term solar generation forecasting using neural
network models. Global irradiance data was obtained from the local weather stations. First
they converted the solar radiation data into a set of stationary data. Then numerical
simulations were performed to calculate errors and results. GHI is predicted using weather
past data and results are validated by comparing predicted output to actual or target output.
Model is trained until the minimum error is remained which was approx. 10%. This algorithm
is not much efficient where we want predictions for one or more years. Also they never
considered the weather extremes due to the global climatic changes.

Piyush k. et al. [9] predicted weather using Sliding Window algorithm which was tested
against weather data for the years 2006 to 2010. They predicted the weather for next three
years using multiple sliding windows of the size of a week. They have taken the span of
fortnight for prediction of the coming week weather. According to study, the weather
condition depends on the current year’s previous week and last year’s same time span.
They used Euclidean distance to compute variations of weather between current year and
previous year. Then the predicted output was compared to original weather conditions.
This approach is quite good but it is not reliable where there are extreme weather
situations like storms, floods or heat due to global warming. This factor was neglected in
the mentioned study. And it is not always possible to match current week weather with
previous years’ week weather.

Ashwarya Dhore et al. [11] proposed the weather prediction system using data mining
technique and developed an application for users to login and view the weather forecasts.
The admin of the application uploads the weather data including effect of the temperature
and preventive measure to the system. And user will login and get the required
information. They actually wanted to build a weather repository that will be used in

Page 4 of 11
numerical weather prediction. Clustering K-mean and FP Growth algorithm was applied
to find the weather prediction. This type of work is only useful where we want prediction
on daily basis or for short-term time. It does not work if a user wants a forecast for a long
period.

Satya Suksrii [12] also used ANN fireworks optimization algorithm to predict weather
daily mean temperature based on various measured parameters obtained from the local
meteorological station. They have predicted the weather or temperature in numerical
form. Stored time series data of the past, which were collected at regular intervals, are
used. The dataset parameters such as Humidity, Precipitation mm, Mean wind speed, Max
wind speed, wind direction and mean temperature. Dataset was divided into four
experiments by using one-year data set, two-year data set and finally three-year data set to
predict the numerical temperature. The temperature only doesn’t tell about the actual
weather like if it is clear today or cloudy etc.

Most of the studies have been done on limited and planned PV panel installation sites at
targeted locations. Various researchers have proposed good methodologies but there is
always a room for improvement. Our proposed work mainly concentrates on accurate
weather forecasting, solar PV panels yield prediction using solar radiance. We will not
only predict solar yield but also, we will be able to identify the best location for installing
of PV panels. Pakistan climate is greatly affected by extreme weather conditions like
monsoon and westerly disturbance (PMD report) [16] so, we will also take into account
the extreme weathers and global warming situations and all the other factors that affect
the PV yield including haze and air pollution. Using past year’s weather data and solar
radiations data of Lahore, Pakistan [20] we will give ROI analysis of the installed site
which is unique aspect.
Problem Statement
The net metering requires installation of two-way energy meters (3-phase) along with
equipment (solar PV panels, stands, inverters, batteries, surge protectors etc.) for given
load which may vary from 1KW to 100KW. There is significant financial investment
associated with it and requires a complete Return on Investment (ROI) analysis that
results in not only in the number of years in which the invested amount will be recovered
but also the solar generation yield assessment at the intended installation site. They key
inputs to the solar generation yield assessment are PV module's surface area, its efficiency
and the solar radiation or irradiance. The irradiance depends on accurate weather based on
the historical data. The irradiance and weather historical data is used to predict the next
year’s irradiance and weather profiles and these needs to be as accurate as possible
targeted on the intended installation site. The solar generation yield assessment primarily
depends on the accuracy of weather profiling to assess the ROI (return on investment) and
detailed specifications of the intended solar panels installation (solar PV panels, stands,
inverters, batteries, surge protectors etc.) investments. The weather data is sometimes not
available or available for a shorter time span and hence requires backward projections and
then forward predictions using data mining techniques.

Page 5 of 11
Proposed Solution
Due to supply and demand gap of energy sector in Pakistan, we need to predict accurate
irradiance and weather conditions for solar PV system yield generation. In this scenario,
we need to identify more appropriate data mining technique among available techniques
with inherent capability of backward and forward projections for accurate weather profile
generation. The solar irradiation which is dependent on weather of a location can help in
predicting the electricity yield by solar modules and in computing return on investment
analysis and system load measurements.

Research Methodology
Solar generation yield assessment is dependent on the installation site, quality of
equipment being used, accuracy of weather profiles. As in this research, our focus is on
identifying the accurate weather profiling using past years’ irradiance and weather data.
Sometimes sufficient amount of irradiance and weather data is not available so we will
predict weather in that case using back propagation technique. Data will be collected and
analyzed and future weather will be predicted based on the past data. The research
methodology adopted for this research is proposed as under:

a) In depth literature review on solar generation yield assessment methods and

irradiance and weather profile generation through data mining techniques and
feature generation methods
b) Collection of irradiance and weather data. The Pakistan solar radiation
measurement data repository would be used, which also contains the weather data
collected from 9 automated solar stations in Pakistan. These stations are operated
by the government of Pakistan, together with NREL (National Renewable Energy
Laboratory) and USAID.
c) Selection of class A predictors and data mining techniques.
d) Features generation and ranking
e) Experimental design
f) Develop and test new/improved/integrated methodology with data mining
techniques to generate accurate irradiance and weather profile projection
inherently integrated with the capabilities of backward and forward projections

Contribution:

The key research contribution will be an extended data mining technique for more
accurate irradiance and weather profile generation as solar generation yield assessment
is limited by its accuracy. The irradiance and weather profile will be available for
researchers and power sector planners to identify the areas with generation capacity in
Mega Watts where solar PV will help Pakistan in reducing energy supply demand gap.

Page 6 of 11
Bibliography
[1] Klaus Jäger, Olindo Isabella, Arno H.M. Smets, René A.C.M.M. vanSwaaij, Miro Zeman.
Solar Energy Fundamentals,Technology,and Systems. Netherlands: Delft University of
Technology, 2014. Electronic, Chapter 18 , Section 18.3 "Meteorological effects on PV
sytem"
[2] Patel, Mukund R. Wind and Solar power system . London: CRC Press, 2006. Chapter 9,
Section 9.6 “array design of PV”.

[3] DURRANI, S.P., BALLUFF, S., WURZER, L. et al. J. Mod. “Photovoltaic yield prediction
using an irradiance forecast model based on multiple neural networks” Power Syst. Clean
Energy (2018) 6: 255. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40565-018-0393-5.

[4] Carl, Caroline. CALCULATING SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC POTENTIAL ON

RESIDENTIAL . Thesis. HawwaII: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ,
2014. Print.

[5] Jie Shi, Wei-Jen Lee, Yongqian Liu, Younping yang and peng wang. "Forecasting power
output of Photovoltaic systems Based on Weather Classification and Support Vector
Machines." IEEE (2012): 1064-1069.
[6] Shruthi D, M.S.P Subathraa, Kumudha, Jagriti (2017) “ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK
BASED PREDICTION OF MONTHLY GLOBAL SOLAR RADIATION IN INDIAN
STATIONS” International Conference on Signal Processing and Communication
(ICSPC’17).

[7] Gasser E. Hassan, M. Elsayyed yousaf. “New Temperature based models for predicting solar
radiation.” Applied Energy (2016): 437-450.

[8] Jawaid, F., & NazirJunejo, K. (2016). Predicting daily mean solar power using machine
learning regression techniques. 2016 Sixth International Conference on Innovative
Computing Technology (INTECH). doi:10.1109/intech.2016.7845051
[9] Piyush Kapoor, Sarabjeet Singh Bedi. “Weather forecasting using Sliding Window algorithm.”
ISRN Signal Processing (2013): 5.

[10] Alanazi, M., Alanazi, A., & khodaei, A. "Long-Term Solar Generation Forecasting ." IEEE/
PES Transmission and Distribution Conference And Exposition (2016). doi:
10.1109/TDC.2016.7519883.

[11] Ashwarya Dhore1, A., Byakude, A., Sonar, B., Waste, M.: Weather prediction using the data
mining techniques. Int. Res. J. Eng. Technol. (IRJET) 4(5), 2562–2565 (2017)

[12] Saktaya Suksri, Warangkhana Kimpan. “Neural Network Training Model for weather
forecasting using Fireworks algorithm” 978-1-5090-4420-7/16 2016 IEEE

[13] (M. A. Mortenson Company, June 2018) https://www.globaldata.com/store/report/gdpe-tr-

s007--renewable-energy-thematic-research/

[14]"Accuracy of energy assessments in utility scale PV power plant using PlantPredict." 2015
IEEE 42nd Photovoltaic Specialist Conference (PVSC). New Orleans, LA, USA: IEEE,

Page 7 of 11
 14-19 June 2015. 4.

[15] Ashish Raj and Manoj Gupta. "Design simulation and performance assessment of yield and
loss forecasting for 100 KWp grid connected solar PV system." 2016 2nd International
Conference on Next Generation Computing Technologies (NGCT). Dehradun, India:
IEEE, 4-16 Oct. 2016. 7.

[16] Chaudhary, Q. Z., Mahmood, A., Rasul, G., Afzaal, M., 2009: “Climate Change Indicators of
Pakistan”,Technical Report No. PMD-22/2009, pp 1-43

[17] Jafaru Mohammed, Mark Yandt and Matthew Wilkins. "Collection and storage of direct
spectral irradiance and DNI datasets with high temporal resolution for CPV energy yield
assessments." 2013 IEEE 39th Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC). Tampa, FL,
USA: IEEE, 16-21 June 2013. 6.

[18] Oo Abdul Rosyid. "Comparative performance testing of solar panels for smart city micro-
grids." 2017 International Conference on Smart Cities, Automation & Intelligent
Computing Systems (ICON-SONICS). Yogyakarta, Indonesia: IEEE, 8-10 Nov. 2017. 7.

[19] "Techno-economical assessment of grid-connected photovoltaic power systems productivity

in summer season in Klagenfurt, Austria." 2014 IEEE International Conference on Power
and Energy (PECon). Kuching, Malaysia: IEEE, 1-3 Dec. 2014. 11.

[20] World Bank. Pakistan solar Radiation Measurement Data. 2016. webpage. 20 feb 2019,
https://energydata.info/dataset/pakistan-solar-measurement-wbg-esmap

[21] Christy Kunjumon, Sreelekshmi S Nair, Deepa Rajan S, L. Padma Suresh, Preetha S L.
“Survey on Weather Forecasting using Data mining” Proc. IEEE Conference on
Emerging Devices and Smart Systems (ICEDSS 2018).

[22] A. Prastawa and R. Dalimi, “New approach on renewable energy solar power prediction in
indonesia based on artificial neural network technique: Southern region of sulawesi island
study case,” in QiR (Quality in Research), 2013 International Conference on, June 2013,
pp. 166–169

[23] Ian Marius Peters, Shravan Karthik, Liu Haohui, Tonio Buonassisi and André M. Nobre,
"Urban Haze and Photovoltaics" Energy & Environmental Science 11(10), 2018

Page 8 of 11
PART II

Recommendation by the Research Supervisor

Name: Signature:__________________ Date:____________

Signed by Supervisory Committee

S.# Name of Designation Signature and Date

Committee
Member
1. Prof. Dr. Faqir M Professor, Riphah Institute of
Bhatti Computing and Applied
Sciences (RICAS) , Riphah
International University, Lahore
2. Dr. Khawaja Assistant Professor, Riphah
Muhammad Fahd Institute of Computing and
Applied Sciences (RICAS) ,
Riphah International University,
Lahore
3. Dr. Ayesha Kashif Assistant Professor, Riphah
Institute of Computing and
Applied Sciences (RICAS),
Riphah International University,
Lahore

Approved by Departmental Research Committee

Certified that the synopsis has been seen by member of DRC and considered it suitable
for putting up to BASR.

Secretary
Departmental Research Committee

Name:__________________________________ Signature:_____________________

Page 9 of 11
Date:_________________

Chairman/HOD ____________________________

Signature: _____________________________

Date: _____________________________

Page 10 of 11
PART III

Dean of Faculty

_________________Approved for placement before BASR.

_________________Not Approved on the basis of following reasons

Signature ____________________________ Date__________________

Secretary BASR

_________________Approved from BASR.

_________________Not Approved on the basis of the following reasons

Signature ____________________________ Date__________________

Page 11 of 11