Abstract
With the opening of the small power brokerage business market in December 2018, the small power trading market has started in Korea. Operators must submit the day-ahead estimates of power output and receive incentives based on its accuracy. Therefore, the accuracy of power generation forecasts is directly affects profits of the operators. The forecasting process for power generation can be divided into two procedure. The first is to forecast solar irradiation and the second is to transform forecasted solar irradiation into power generation. There are two methods for transformation. One is to simulate with physical model, and another is to use regression model. In this study, we found the best-fit regression model by analyzing hourly data of PV output and solar irradiation data during three years for 242 PV plants in Korea. The best model was not a linear model, but a sigmoidal model and specifically a Gompertz model. The combined linear regression and Gompertz curve was proposed because a the curve has non-zero y-intercept. As the result, R2 and RMSE between observed data and the curve was significantly reduced.
