Solar energy is one of the leading renewable energy sources in the world and it continues to grow. However, it depends on sunlight which is an intermittent natural resource. This makes power output predictability critical for the integration of solar photovoltaics into traditional electrical grid systems.
In the current analysis, power output from horizontal photovoltaics installed in 12 locations in the northern hemisphere is predicted. Only location and weather data are used without information about irradiance. While irradiance is a strong predictor of solar power output, collecting this information about a location is often tedious and its estimation may have significant errors. Hence, the ability to predict power output without irradiance data needs to be further explored to save time, effort, and cost with no significant loss of accuracy.