A spatial–temporal data-driven deep learning framework for enhancing ultra-short-term prediction of distributed photovoltaic power generation

Effective utilization of spatial–temporal information can improve the accuracy of ultra-short-term prediction of power generation from distributed photovoltaic (PV) stations in the region. This paper introduces an ultra-short-term spatial–temporal prediction model for distributed PV power generation, blending data-driven methodology with deep learning technique. The model integrates a self-attention mechanism (SA), a Bi-directional Convolutional Gated Recurrent Unit (BiConvGRU), and an encoder-decoder structure, called ABCGRU. The spatial–temporal attributes of PV power generation can be effectively utilized to accurately predict the output of PV power stations at different locations. Firstly, this paper proposes a 2D distributed PV measurement frame approach considering the spatial–temporal properties of PV power. The combination of Pearson correlation coefficient, the normalized Euclidean distance, the Shape-based distance (SBD) analysis based on cross-correlation and geographic distance reduces the input dimensionality. Secondly, to better capture the spatial–temporal patterns within the 2D distributed PV measurement frame, this paper proposes the ABCGRU model. Finally, the predictive performance of the model is verified through experiments. On the Birmingham dataset, the relative absolute error (RAE) for single-step (15 min) prediction is 0.13, and the average RAE for multi-step (30–60 min) prediction is about four times higher than ConvGRU. The single-step prediction RAE of Little Rock and New Orleans datasets is about 3–4 times higher than ConvGRU. In the comparison between the same series of models, the 4-layer ABCGRU has the highest accuracy. Moreover, the effectiveness of data dimensionality reduction was verified through experimental comparison. The RAE for single-step prediction on the Datong dataset is 0.0048.