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Abstract Accurate estimation of solar radiation components of a specific location has been one of the most important issues of solar energy applications. In this paper, a new approach, named Weighted Gaussian Process Regression (WGPR), is developed for multi-step ahead forecasting of daily global and direct horizontal solar radiation components in Saharan climate. The WGPR is tested using global and direct solar radiation data recorded over three years (2013–2015) in a semi-arid region in Algeria. It consists of forecasting 10-steps ahead for both components with automatic selection of relevant climatic data. In this respect two different architectures of WGPR are proposed, WGPR Parallel Forecasting Architecture (WGPR-PFA) and WGPR Cascade Forecasting Architecture (WGPR-CFA). The proposed approach proved to be effective with respect to the basic GPR in terms of accuracy and processing time for daily global and direct solar radiation forecasting. Forecasting with WGPR-CFA led to error RMSE = 3.18 (MJ/m2) and correlation coefficient r2 = 85.85 (%) for the 10th daily global horizontal radiation, and RMSE = 5.23 (MJ/m2) and correlation coefficient r2 = 56.21(%) for 10th daily direct horizontal radiation. The achieved results specify that the developed WGPR approach can be adjudged as an efficient machine learning model for accurate forecasting of solar radiation components. Graphical abstract Image Highlights • A new GPR model is developed for multi-step ahead forecasting. • Two different architectures of WGPR are proposed. • A case study of Ghardaïa regionhas been considered in this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate and effective forecasting of short-term global solar radiation is critical for the development of photovoltaic systems, particularly for integration into existing grid systems. However, its non-stationary characteristics caused by climatic factors make its estimation extremely challenging. In this regard, a newly designed learning technique for multi-hour global solar radiation forecasting is proposed based on a time-varying filter-empirical mode decomposition (TVF-EMD), feature selection, and extreme learning machine (ELM) as an essence regression. The proposed hybridization strategy consists of three main steps for understanding the fundamental behavioral aspects of hourly global solar radiation data. The first phase employs the TVF-EMD algorithm to deal with the variability of global solar radiation data by separating it into a series of more stable and constant subseries. Then, the feature selection step is employed to evaluate and identify distinctive features set from the whole decomposed subseries by means of the RReliefF algorithm. The selected feature sets are used to train and optimize our forecasting extreme learning machine model, then the tuned ELM model is used to assess the forecasting accuracy. The proposed TVF-EMD-RF-ELM model is evaluated and validated in different regions in Algeria with various climate conditions. The forecasting findings of the TVF-EMD algorithm demonstrate high accuracy compared to the recent version of empirical mode decomposition CEEMDAN. Overall forecasting periods, the TVF-EMD-RF-ELM model produces an error less than 8.3% in terms of normalized root mean square error nRMSE in all studied regions. • A detailed review of different decomposition techniques for global solar radiation forecasting. • An improved artificial intelligence model for multi-hour solar radiation forecasting has been developed. • A regional examination is established, with three sites. • The proposed hybrid model is validated against several models. • The suggested model has been validated for its ability to forecast hourly global solar radiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar radiation components assessment is a highly required parameter for solar energy applications. Due to the non-stationary behavior of solar radiation parameters and variety of atmosphere conditions, stand-alone forecasting models are insufficient for providing accurate estimation in some cases. In this respect, different hybrid models have been proposed in recent years to overcome the limitations of single models and boost the forecasting precision. In this paper, acomprehensive literature review of the recent trends in hybrid model techniques for solar radiation components assessment is presented. The main objective behind this study is to present a comparative study between different hybrid models, explore their application, and identify promising and potential models for solar radiation application assessment. The performance ranking of each hybrid model is complicated due the diversity of the data length and scale, forecasting horizon, performance metrics, time step and climate condition. Overall, the presented study provides preliminary guidelines for a complete view of the hybrid models and tools that can be used in order to improve solar radiation assessment. • In-depth review of different hybrid methods for solar radiation forecasting is presented. • Forecasting horizon for each category is discussed. • Worldwide regions and data are investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]