Forecasting meteorology models implemented by the feed-forward architecture of neural networks

J. Moreno, J. Serrano, and J. Corredor Engineering and Achitecture Department Universidad de Pamplona, Villa del Rosario, Colombia. {jorge.morenoj, jcserrano, john.corredor}@unipamplona.edu.co
Abstract Forecasting meteorology models has become a main tool, in order to obtain energy exploitation, in turn ecologically. Currently Articial Intelligence (AI) has changed the approach to solve the problems of prediction, among others. The change in approach is due to the AI that has modern learning techniques with mathematical models closer to reality. Our approach is to implement feed-forward neural networks architecture into wind forecasting models. The objective of our work is to predict the mean monthly wind speed behavior for year 2012 and beyond, as close to reality in the city of San Jos de Ccuta-Colombia. Keywords: neural networks, feedback architecture, wind energy,
forecasting meteorology

predict the monthly average wind speed in the city of San Jos de Ccuta-Colombia, for 2012 and next years. This work is organized as follows. Section 2 presents in detail the characteristics of neural networks and state of art, describing its main components. Section 3 describes the process performed to input data of the neural network to complete the information (incomplete data given by IDEAM - Colombia). Section 4 presents methodology used to design the neural network, and also presents the experiments conducted to evaluate the performance of the different approaches proposed. Section 5, show results of prediction the monthly average wind speed in the city of Cucuta-Colombia, for 2012. Section 6 closes the paper, showing some conclusions and future work.

1. Introduction
Currently the countries are researching how the renewable energy sources enhance their contribution (clean, green energy), due to the high demand for energy worldwide. One of the alternative energy sources more use, is wind energy, which represents 10% of energy in Europe [6]. Wind energy differs from conventional energy sources due its stochastic nature, because the wind speed is considered one of the most difcult meteorological parameters to modeling [5]. Forecasting meteorological play a key role in the challenge of balancing supply and demand on electrical consumption systems. Neural networks are a great tool in science to make predictions, offering robust solutions and easy implementation [2]. In order to obtain a better prediction and less uncertainty level, we implement a forecasting model using feedforward neural network architecture. The meteorological data diversity is obtained using different neural network conguration. For prediction, we have a set of twelve neural network congurations (one by month) [6]. We propose use two data types for feed of neural networks, provided by Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM - Colombia). In the medium term, our forecasting meteorology models implemented by the feedforward architecture of neural networks, will be able to

2. Articial Neural Networks

The Articial Neural Networks (ANNs) are known as the "universal approximators" and "computational models" with particular characteristics such as the ability to learn or adapt, to organize or to generalize data. The basis of neural networks is the neuron, this represents the smallest unit implemented. The articial neurons are interconnected through a synaptic weight (which is a numeric value). The synaptic weight is sent to the nucleus of the neural network to perform calculations inside. The input value of neuron i (net i) to the activation function is described in 1, as the sum of the synaptic weights multiplied by the input neurons. net=
N X i=1

Wi j Y j

(1)

There are a number of papers related to the weather forecast using neural networks, then we describes the most signicant articles. In Lei Ma et al [4], they study the different models that are implemented for the prediction of wind speed, their advantages and drawbacks. Through their observations, we have observed advantages of using articial intelligence in this research. In [6], the authors emphasize the importance of generating multiple neural network to achieving better prediction

results, and highlights the value of having a variety of data. Similar our work in the creation of 12 neural networks to improve the system accuracy. In [4], the authors implemented neural networks to predict the wind speed in a wind park, based on a regional mesoscale model in order to increase accuracy in the short term and thus reduce the problem of accuracy of the neural network, as the time range to predict increases. With this article, the training data has been organized such that the neural network could have a great degree of precision, even though the network have to predict the average speed on a wide scale of time.. R.E Abdel et. al. [7] highlights the importance of optimal treatment of input data in the neural network, in order to achieve lower noise and error that the neural network could generate. With this point of view, were designed different neural networks using different types of input data to reduce noise and the corresponding errors. E. Rivera et al. [1] they implement data about a large margin of time (data up to 7 years antique) and tested with different neuron network settings, changing both the number of layers as the number of neuron in the input layer. Through this approach climate data, we obtained from the city of Cucuta, with an antiquity of 17 years and prioritized change the number of neurons in the input layer, to test different versions of the neural network in order to obtain a better prediction G. Wang et al. [2], have implemented a modication of neural networks for prediction, specically the EMDFNN model (empirical mode decomposition based on neural networks) also evaluated different congurations of data, varying the delta delay on each. Based on the different congurations tested, was taken into account varying the time delta networks in order to obtain a variation in the number of elements.

Fig. 1: Statistical technique in order to complete daily data

Number 1 neural 2 neural 3 neural 4 neural 5 neural 10 neural 25 neural 50 neural

Input 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28

Hidden Layout 1 2 3 4 5 10 25 50

Average Error 0,277 0,731 0,550 0,562 0,258 0,274 0,404 0,369

Table 1: Average errors obtained in data pre-processing.

3. Pre-processing information.
We use in this paper four types of data: monthly average wind speed, average monthly temperature, distance traveled daily wind, mean daily temperature[2]. These data were supplied by the IDEAM-Colombia, from 1995 until 2012, but with the drawback of being incomplete. To complete and optimize the data, we used two techniques, statistical and articial intelligence[1].

3.2 Neural Networks

We implemented a neural network in order to obtain the missing monthly average wind speed data. We performed different versions of neural network, changed the neural input numbers and the numbers of neural in hidden layer. In Table 1 the input layer have been tested with 28 Neural Networks and the average error obtained is show. As discussed previously, we implemented a neural network to complete the missing data from 1995 to 2005. In order to complete the data, we have used data from 88 months distributed as follows: 64 for the training stage and 24 for validation stage. In the training stage is made different versions of neural networks by changing the number of neurons in the hidden layer. Table 1 shows the average errors obtained. Average errors are calculated with Equation 3, n number of data used in the validation stage, expected output is the average wind speed obtained by the neural network and real output is the

3.1 Statistical technique

A statistical technique was implemented in order to complete daily data regarding the temperature and distance traveled of winds. This technique consists of the average of next day, previous day, same day from previous month and the same day of next month the date desired to completing. Figure 1 and equation 2 represents the statistical technique. n= 18 + 21 + 13 + 18 4 (2)

average wind speed real.

n P

Type Daytime temperature

Input x x

Output

Av.error =

i=1

(expectedOutput realOutput) n

Wind distance (3) Monthly average wind speed

From the experience acquired in this research, neural networks with high degree of precision, containing 28 neurons in the hidden layer. Because there are no standards for neurons in the hidden layer, different amounts were tested up to 50, a number that was considered sufcient to solve the problem. Table 1 shows that there is not a direct relationship between the number of neurons in the hidden layer and the average error. From Table 1 shows that 1 neural and 5 neural have the lowest average error. We choose 1 neural because the difference between the two neural average error is not very high (1 neural and 5 neural networks). In addition, the computational cost to process data with 1 neural network is much lower. In order to observe better the behavior about wind speed, we organize the data in two groups. Figures 2 and 3, show the two groups, X-axis represents the wind speed, Y-axis represents the months of the year. Additionally Figures 2 and 3 show the average wind speed at 5mps lower and upper respectively.

Table 2: Distribution of the input and output data.

4. Methodology
4.1 Process
In order to obtain the prediction, we proceed to design and modeling the neural networks, with the previously processed data. The process ow is shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 2: Behavior annual wind speed with speeds above 5 mps, after being completed. Fig. 4: Process ow: modeling neural networks.

4.2 Step 1
With the purpose of having a higher accuracy, we have organized the data input and output of the neural network [7]. Table 2 describes how data is organized. In order to train the neural networks, data were used corresponds for the months: January, February, March, April, June and July from 1995 to 2012. In turn, we have taken into account for the years 1995-2011 from May to December, this because only data monthly average wind speed for such dates were available.

Fig. 3: Behavior annual wind speed with speeds below 5 mps, after being completed.

Month January, March, May, July, August, October, December April, June, September, November February

Days 31 30 28

Inputs 62 60 56 Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr.

Number of neural in hidden layer 1 26.67 16.40 16.40 2 66.67 14.95 26.55 98.98 7.25 13.92 10.80 20.46 41.59 53.90 3 4 60.00 27.78 36.00 52.73 20.09 10.27 26.06 14.12 48.04 22,70 98.86 14.74 5 53.55 30.88

0.57 1.05
28.62 8.37 19.83 17.11

Table 3: Number of input, organized by month.

5.41
42.61

6.12
26.40 28.33 15.65

4.3 Step 2
To perform a prediction model by implementing neural networks, is chosen Feed-Forward architecture, model widely used due to its excellent ability in learning from experience [4].

May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec.

5.31 1.82
16.19 51.24

4.13
17.45 32.14

4.4 Step 3
For this research we have chosen MATLAB simulation software, specically toolbox nntool.

2.55
16.13 4,24 21.72

3.99
12,85 31.06 4.72

3,41
31.88 12.49

4.5 Step 4
This step begins to the neural network model, which denes three guidelines: number of inputs, number of layers and neurons in each layer. The following equation (4) describes the number of inputs that neural network should have. inputs = d i (4)

0.01
7.44

0.57

Table 4: Errors generated by the neural network in the prediction stage.

In (4), d corresponds to the numbers of days of the month, and i numbers of data type. With equation (4) we have completed the missing data for the Table 4. There is no rule that describes the number of layers to be used in a neural network. However, it is acceptable to a network with three layers, with a feed-forward architecture [2]. After several cycles of training, the following Equation 5 was used to obtain the error rate of the neural network. Real expected 100| (5) expected The error rates are shown in Table 4, where each row represents the month of the year, and each column the number of neurons in the hidden layer. [h!]error = | Fig. 5: Behavior prediction wind speed for year 2012 in Cucuta-Colombia

6. Conclusion
In the particular case of Cucuta-Colombia, we decided to start the analysis with neural network with 31 inputs, and only one type of data (wind distance). However, when moving to neural network models with 62, 60 and 56 inputs and 2 inputs data type (wind distance and temperature daily) the performance and accuracy of the neural networks increase. We also noted that according to Table 1 is not necessary to have large numbers of neurons in the hidden layer, in order to increase performance and accuracy of the neural

5. Prediction
Figure 5 shows the prediction of 2012, X-axis represents the wind speed, Y-axis represents the months of the year. We can observed the behavior as binomial distribution very similar to those above and below average 5mp (Figures 1 and 2 respectively).

network. By increasing the number of neurons in the hidden layer increases the computing needs without increasing the accuracy of neural networks in prediction (Precision errors are obtained below 6.2% in Table 1 of neural networks with hidden layer composed of up to 5 neuron networks). This research is a very useful contribution to business and local government to make use of alternative energy sources. The prediction of the behavior of the average wind speed is very successful, and this tool can be used successfully to predict the behavior of the wind for the next few years. With precision stability of neural networks, the developed model is an effective tool for the operation and planning of wind parks [3].

7. Acknowledgments
We want to give special thanks to Eliecer Colina PhD, throughout the advice given. To the Msc. Luz Marina Santos, throughout moral and intellectual support provided. To the Engineer Anderson Smith Florez, for all the assistance and encouragement given. Because without them this project would not have been possible.

References
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