NFISiS: New Perspectives on Fuzzy Inference Systems for Renewable Energy Forecasting
It addresses the need for interpretable and efficient forecasting models in renewable energy, particularly for solar power, but is incremental as it builds on existing fuzzy models.
This paper tackles the problem of renewable energy forecasting by developing new fuzzy inference systems that balance accuracy and interpretability, achieving superior performance over traditional machine learning and deep learning models in photovoltaic energy forecasting.
Deep learning models, despite their popularity, face challenges such as long training times and a lack of interpretability. In contrast, fuzzy inference systems offer a balance of accuracy and transparency. This paper addresses the limitations of traditional Takagi-Sugeno-Kang fuzzy models by extending the recently proposed New Takagi-Sugeno-Kang model to a new Mamdani-based regressor. These models are data-driven, allowing users to define the number of rules to balance accuracy and interpretability. To handle the complexity of large datasets, this research integrates wrapper and ensemble techniques. A Genetic Algorithm is used as a wrapper for feature selection, creating genetic versions of the models. Furthermore, ensemble models, including the Random New Mamdani Regressor, Random New Takagi-Sugeno-Kang, and Random Forest New Takagi-Sugeno-Kang, are introduced to improve robustness. The proposed models are validated on photovoltaic energy forecasting datasets, a critical application due to the intermittent nature of solar power. Results demonstrate that the genetic and ensemble fuzzy models, particularly the Genetic New Takagi-Sugeno-Kang and Random Forest New Takagi-Sugeno-Kang, achieve superior performance. They often outperform both traditional machine learning and deep learning models while providing a simpler and more interpretable rule-based structure. The models are available online in a library called nfisis (https://pypi.org/project/nfisis/).