Predicting global horizontal irradiance of north central region of India via machine learning regressor algorithms

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The ability to predict global horizontal irradiance (GHI) in the wake of changing weather conditions is becoming increasingly important in driving economic growth in the renewable energy industry. The choice of relevant meteorological variables for predicting GHI is crucial because it influences the prediction accuracy due to various geographical conditions. To fulfill this aim, this proposed study identifies a subset of the relevant input variables for the prediction of GHI by applying two methods Feature Combination (FC) and Feature Selection (FS). The results reveal that the most significant input variables for predicting GHI are Solar Zenith Angle, Dew Point, Diffuse Horizontal irradiance, Direct Normal Irradiance, and Wind speed obtained by the FS method. The predictive performance of the selected features is evaluated by feeding them into six different types of Machine Learning (ML) regressor algorithms such as Multiple Linear regressor (MLR), Decision Tree (DT), Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boost (GB), Light Gradient Boost Machine (LGBM) and Extra Tree (ET). The performances of models are evaluated by using statistical measures such as Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). ET regressor gives the best prediction performance among all the six models. It is observed that the percentage reduction in error for the FS method as compared to the FC method in terms of the statistical indicators MAE, RMSE, and MAPE are 8.5%, 7.72%, and 25.84% respectively. It shows that the FS method gives better predictive performance than the FC method for the estimation of GHI.