Solar Multimodal Transformer: Intraday Solar Irradiance Predictor Using Public Cameras and Time Series
Accurate intraday solar irradiance forecasting is crucial for optimizing dispatch planning and electricity trading. For this purpose, we introduce a novel and effective approach that includes three distinguishing components from the literature: 1) the uncommon use of single-frame public camera imagery; 2) solar irradiance time series scaled with a proposed normalization step, which boosts performance; and 3) a lightweight multimodal model, called Solar Multimodal Transformer (SMT), that delivers accurate shortterm solar irradiance forecasting by combining images and scaled time series. Benchmarking against Solcast, a leading solar forecasting service provider, our model improved prediction accuracy by 25.95%. Our approach allows for easy adaptation to various camera specifications, offering broad applicability for real-world solar forecasting challenges.
2025-02-26
979-8-3315-1083-1
5051
5060
REVIEWED
EPFL
Event name | Event acronym | Event place | Event date |
WACV 2025 | Tucson, AZ, USA | 2025-02-26 - 2025-03-06 | |