Data-driven solar forecasting enables near-optimal economic decisions

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Dai, Zhixiang, Yin, Minghao, Chen, Xuanhong, Carpentieri, Alberto, Leinonen, Jussi, Bonev, Boris, Zhong, Chengzhe, Kurth, Thorsten, Sun, Jingan, Cherukuri, Ram, Zhang, Yuzhou, Zhang, Ruihua, Hariri, Farah, Ding, Xiaodong, Zhu, Chuanxiang, Zhang, Dake, Cui, Yaodan, Lu, Yuxi, Song, Yue, He, Bin, Chen, Jie, Zhu, Yixin, Xu, Chenheng, Liu, Maofeng, Niu, Zeyi, Qi, Wanpeng, Shan, Xu, Xian, Siyuan, Lin, Ning, Feng, Kairui
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916940081004544
author Dai, Zhixiang
Yin, Minghao
Chen, Xuanhong
Carpentieri, Alberto
Leinonen, Jussi
Bonev, Boris
Zhong, Chengzhe
Kurth, Thorsten
Sun, Jingan
Cherukuri, Ram
Zhang, Yuzhou
Zhang, Ruihua
Hariri, Farah
Ding, Xiaodong
Zhu, Chuanxiang
Zhang, Dake
Cui, Yaodan
Lu, Yuxi
Song, Yue
He, Bin
Chen, Jie
Zhu, Yixin
Xu, Chenheng
Liu, Maofeng
Niu, Zeyi
Qi, Wanpeng
Shan, Xu
Xian, Siyuan
Lin, Ning
Feng, Kairui
author_facet Dai, Zhixiang
Yin, Minghao
Chen, Xuanhong
Carpentieri, Alberto
Leinonen, Jussi
Bonev, Boris
Zhong, Chengzhe
Kurth, Thorsten
Sun, Jingan
Cherukuri, Ram
Zhang, Yuzhou
Zhang, Ruihua
Hariri, Farah
Ding, Xiaodong
Zhu, Chuanxiang
Zhang, Dake
Cui, Yaodan
Lu, Yuxi
Song, Yue
He, Bin
Chen, Jie
Zhu, Yixin
Xu, Chenheng
Liu, Maofeng
Niu, Zeyi
Qi, Wanpeng
Shan, Xu
Xian, Siyuan
Lin, Ning
Feng, Kairui
contents Solar energy adoption is critical to achieving net-zero emissions. However, it remains difficult for many industrial and commercial actors to decide on whether they should adopt distributed solar-battery systems, which is largely due to the unavailability of fast, low-cost, and high-resolution irradiance forecasts. Here, we present SunCastNet, a lightweight data-driven forecasting system that provides 0.05$^\circ$, 10-minute resolution predictions of surface solar radiation downwards (SSRD) up to 7 days ahead. SunCastNet, coupled with reinforcement learning (RL) for battery scheduling, reduces operational regret by 76--93\% compared to robust decision making (RDM). In 25-year investment backtests, it enables up to five of ten high-emitting industrial sectors per region to cross the commercial viability threshold of 12\% Internal Rate of Return (IRR). These results show that high-resolution, long-horizon solar forecasts can directly translate into measurable economic gains, supporting near-optimal energy operations and accelerating renewable deployment.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_06925
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Data-driven solar forecasting enables near-optimal economic decisions
Dai, Zhixiang
Yin, Minghao
Chen, Xuanhong
Carpentieri, Alberto
Leinonen, Jussi
Bonev, Boris
Zhong, Chengzhe
Kurth, Thorsten
Sun, Jingan
Cherukuri, Ram
Zhang, Yuzhou
Zhang, Ruihua
Hariri, Farah
Ding, Xiaodong
Zhu, Chuanxiang
Zhang, Dake
Cui, Yaodan
Lu, Yuxi
Song, Yue
He, Bin
Chen, Jie
Zhu, Yixin
Xu, Chenheng
Liu, Maofeng
Niu, Zeyi
Qi, Wanpeng
Shan, Xu
Xian, Siyuan
Lin, Ning
Feng, Kairui
Geophysics
Machine Learning
Solar energy adoption is critical to achieving net-zero emissions. However, it remains difficult for many industrial and commercial actors to decide on whether they should adopt distributed solar-battery systems, which is largely due to the unavailability of fast, low-cost, and high-resolution irradiance forecasts. Here, we present SunCastNet, a lightweight data-driven forecasting system that provides 0.05$^\circ$, 10-minute resolution predictions of surface solar radiation downwards (SSRD) up to 7 days ahead. SunCastNet, coupled with reinforcement learning (RL) for battery scheduling, reduces operational regret by 76--93\% compared to robust decision making (RDM). In 25-year investment backtests, it enables up to five of ten high-emitting industrial sectors per region to cross the commercial viability threshold of 12\% Internal Rate of Return (IRR). These results show that high-resolution, long-horizon solar forecasts can directly translate into measurable economic gains, supporting near-optimal energy operations and accelerating renewable deployment.
title Data-driven solar forecasting enables near-optimal economic decisions
topic Geophysics
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06925