High-resolution spatiotemporal assessment of solar potential from remote sensing data using deep learning

Abstract

Spatiotemporal assessment of solar potential is one of the most promising solutions to find suitable locations for future photovoltaic systems’ placement. However, accurate assessment of solar potential on large areas can be challenging due to missing data or computational complexity. In this paper, a fully convolutional neural network based method for high-resolution spatiotemporal assessment of solar potential by using remote sensing data is presented. The method is trained and validated on the area of 32 km2 of the Maribor city, Slovenia, and tested on the 6 different locations in Slovenia and Germany. The proposed method was tested against the simulation algorithm, which utilized isotropic Liu Jordan diffuse model or anisotropic Perez model with sky view factor based shading. On average, a normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) of 6.06% and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 4.29% was achieved in test locations against the simulation based on Liu-Jordan model. When training the fully convolutional neural network models against the ground truth, generated with more advanced Perez diffuse model, the average NRMSE was 8.37% and MAPE of 10.90% was achieved across all test locations. Additionally, it was shown that the proposed method can assess solar potential in high-resolution from the input in lower resolution with higher accuracy than the simulation algorithm, while being up to 1500-times faster.