Gomes, E., Esteves, A., Morais, H., & Pereira, L. (2025). Leveraging Explainable Artificial Intelligence in Solar Photovoltaic Mappings: Model Explanations and Feature Selection. Energies, 18(5), 1282. https://doi.org/10.3390/en18051282
Publications
This work explores the effectiveness of explainable artificial intelligence in mapping solar photovoltaic power outputs based on weather data, focusing on short-term mappings. We analyzed the impact values provided by the Shapley additive explanation method when applied to two algorithms designed for tabular data—XGBoost and TabNet—and conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the overall model and across seasons. Our findings revealed that the impact of selected features remained relatively consistent throughout the year, underscoring their uniformity across seasons. Additionally, we propose a feature selection methodology utilizing the explanation values to produce more efficient models, by reducing data requirements while maintaining performance within a threshold of the original model. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology was demonstrated through its application to a residential dataset in Madeira, Portugal, augmented with weather data sourced from SolCast.
Keywords: explainable artificial intelligence; feature selection; machine learning; photovoltaic seasonality
Velosa, N., Morais, H., & Pereira, L. (2026). Day-ahead optimization model for renewable energy communities considering load shifting, electric vehicles and vehicle‑to‑grid technology. Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks, 46, 102202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.segan.2026.102202
Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) represent a promising approach to accelerate the energy transition by enabling collective self-consumption and local energy management. However, the intermittent nature of renewable generation and the increasing integration of Electric Vehicles (EVs) pose significant challenges for optimal energy scheduling. This paper proposes a day-ahead multi-objective optimization model for RECs that simultaneously considers load shifting, EV charging coordination, and Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology to minimize operational costs while maintaining user comfort. The model is formulated as a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem and implements the epsilon-constraint method to generate Pareto-optimal solutions, revealing trade-offs between economic efficiency and user preferences. Load shifting is modeled using a Multiple Knapsack Problem (MKP) approach with penalty functions to account for deviations from preferred time slots. Results from a case study composed of three different objectives demonstrated that, in the best case, self-sufficiency can be increased from 17.06% to 99.27%, and a significant reduction from 8.54 € to −3.47 € can be achieved in a single day.
Keywords: renewable energy communities; load balancing; load shifting; multiple knapsack; mixed integer linear programming; electric vehicles; vehicle-to-grid
Conference Papers
D. Antunes, T. Soares, H. Morais, “P2P Markets to Support Trading in Smart Grids with Electric Vehicles,” Proc. 20th Int. Conf. on the European Energy Market (EEM), 2025, pp. 1-6
As energy systems evolve, protecting and empowering consumers is vital, enabling participation in decentralized electricity markets and maximizing benefits from energy resources. The integration of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and Renewable Energy Sources (RES) fosters new energy communities, shifting from centralized systems to distributed structures. Consumers can sell excess production to neighbors, increasing income, reducing bills, and advancing energy transition goals. This paper proposes a community-based peer-to-peer (P2P) energy market model that reduces costs while respecting network constraints. Using the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM), ensures privacy enhancement, decentralization, and scalability. The Relaxed Branch Flow Model (RBFM) manages constraints, and Electric Vehicles (EVs) reduce imports and costs through strategic discharging. Tested on a 33-bus distribution network, the ADMM-based approach aligns closely with a centralized benchmark, showing minor discrepancies while maintaining system reliability. This model underscores the potential of decentralized markets for consumer- centric, flexible, and efficient energy trading.
D. E. C. Barragán, B. A. A. Acurio, J. López, H. Morais, C. P. Guzman and L. Silva, “Day-Ahead Photovoltaic Power Forecasting with Limited Data,” 2024 IEEE URUCON, Montevideo, Uruguay, 2024, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/URUCON63440.2024.10850063.
Forecasting algorithms for photovoltaic (PV) power generation play an important role in energy management systems. Nevertheless, the precision of machine learning models is significantly compromised when historical data is limited. This situation is challenging for new plants for which a long history of measurements is not yet available. The unpredictable nature of the weather gives the perception that a competitive forecast requires a substantial amount of data and a very complicated algorithm. However, in this manuscript, it was found that using five historical days for the inverse quantification of uncertainty, can implicitly describe complex non-linear relationships between last five-day records and day-ahead PV power generation. The proposed approach learns the emerging patterns across various seasons throughout the year without relying on exogenous data such as air temperature, wind speed, pressure, cloud cover, and relative humidity. Results using real-world data collected at the microgrid of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) confirm that our proposed model outperforms previous state-of-the-art deep learning models as Long short-term memory (LSTM), Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) and traditional Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) statistical model, using limited data. The proposed approach is flexible and can be easily adapted to other PV power generation systems with limited data. The source code is available at https://github.com/byronacunia/Day-Ahead-Photovoltaic-Power-Forecasting-with-Limited-Data.git
Posters
D. Antunes, T. Soares, H. Morais, “P2P Markets to Support Trading in Smart Grids with Electric Vehicles,” poster presented at the 20th Int. Conf. on the European Energy Market (EEM), 2025.
As energy systems evolve, protecting and empowering consumers is vital, enabling participation in decentralized electricity markets and maximizing benefits from energy resources. The integration of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and Renewable Energy Sources (RES) fosters new energy communities, shifting from centralized systems to distributed structures. Consumers can sell excess production to neighbors, increasing income, reducing bills, and advancing energy transition goals. This poster proposes a community-based peer-to-peer (P2P) energy market model that reduces costs while respecting network constraints. Using the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM), ensures privacy enhancement, decentralization, and scalability. The Relaxed Branch Flow Model (RBFM) manages constraints, and Electric Vehicles (EVs) reduce imports and costs through strategic discharging. Tested on a 33-bus distribution network, the ADMM-based approach aligns closely with a centralized benchmark, showing minor discrepancies while maintaining system reliability. This model underscores the potential of decentralized markets for consumer-centric, flexible, and efficient energy trading.



