Photovoltaic power forecasting using quantum machine learning

Predicting solar panel power output is crucial for advancing the energy transition but is complicated by the variable and non-linear nature of solar energy. This is influenced by numerous meteorological factors, geographical positioning, and photovoltaic cell properties, posing significant challenges to forecasting accuracy and grid stability. Our study introduces a suite of solutions centered around hybrid quantum neural networks designed to tackle these complexities. The first proposed model, the Hybrid Quantum Long Short-Term Memory, surpasses all tested models by over 40% lower mean absolute and mean squared errors. The second proposed model, Hybrid Quantum Sequence-to-Sequence neural network, once trained, predicts photovoltaic power with 16% lower mean absolute error for arbitrary time intervals without the need for prior meteorological data, highlighting its versatility. Moreover, our hybrid models perform better even when trained on limited datasets, underlining their potential utility in data-scarce scenarios. These findings represent a stride towards resolving time series prediction challenges in energy power forecasting through hybrid quantum models, showcasing the transformative potential of quantum machine learning in catalyzing the renewable energy transition.