Physics-Informed State Space Models for Day-Ahead Photovoltaic Power Forecasting

Phil Aupke, Muhammad Hassan, Khalid Ali, Seema, Andreas Kassler +1

Accurate day-ahead photovoltaic (PV) power forecasting requires both strong temporal modeling and adherence to physical PV system constraints. Purely data-driven models often ignore the underlying PV conversion process and may produce predictions that are outside the operational range of a PV system. In this paper, we propose a physics-informed state space framework that combines a differentiable PV conversion model with a selective state space backbone (PowerMamba). Our approach follows a physics-residual decomposition. The physics module provides a structured baseline based on solar geometry, irradiance, temperature effects, and inverter limits, while the state space model learns residual corrections from numerical weather prediction (NWP) inputs over a 24-hour horizon. Experiments on one year of utility-scale PV data show that the proposed method significantly improves forecasting accuracy, reducing RMSE by 38.5% and MAE by 45.8% compared to a physics-only baseline, and outperforming a purely data-driven model. Results further show that incorporating system-level physics provides the largest performance gains, while additional refinements offer only marginal improvements.…