A novel digital-twin approach based on transformer for photovoltaic power prediction

Abstract

The prediction of photovoltaic (PV) system performance has been intensively studied as it plays an important role in the context of sustainability and renewable energy generation. In this paper, a digital twin (DT) model based on a domain-matched transformer is proposed using convolutional neural network (CNN) for domain-invariant feature extraction, transformer for PV performance prediction, and domain adaptation neural network (DANN) for domain adaptation. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is validated using a PV power prediction dataset. The results indicate an accuracy improvement of up to 39.99% in model performance. Additionally, experiments with varying numbers of timestamps demonstrate enhanced PV power prediction performance as parameters are continuously updated within the DT framework, offering a reliable solution for real-time and adaptive PV power forecasting.