Toward Better PV Panel’s Output Power Prediction; a Module Based on Nonlinear Autoregressive Neural Network with Exogenous Inputs

Much work has been carried out for modeling the output power of photovoltaic panels. Using artificial neural networks (ANNS), one could efficiently model the output power of heterogeneous photovoltaic (HPV) panels. However, due to the existing different types of artificial neural network implementations, it has become hard to choose the best approach to use for a specific application. This raises the need for studies that develop models using the different neural networks types and compare the efficiency of these different types for that specific application. In this work, two neural network types, namely, the nonlinear autoregressive network with exogenous inputs (NARX) and the deep feed-forward (DFF) neural network, have been developed and compared for modeling the maximum output power of HPV panels. Both neural networks have four exogenous inputs and two outputs. Matlab/Simulink is used in evaluating the proposed two models under a variety of atmospheric conditions. A comprehensive evaluation, including a Diebold-Mariano (DM) test, is applied to verify the ability of the proposed networks. Moreover, the work further investigates the two developed neural networks using their actual implementation on a low-cost microcontroller. Both neural networks have performed very well; however, the NARX model performance is much better compared with DFF. Using the NARX network, a prediction of PV output power could be obtained, with half the execution time required to obtain the same prediction with the DFF neural network, and with accuracy of ±0.18 W.