On the use of niching genetic algorithms for variable selection in solar radiation estimation

Prediction of climatic variables, in particular those related to wind and solar radiation, has developed a huge interest in recent years, mainly due to its applications to renewable energy. In many cases there is a large number of factors that influence the climatic variable of interest, and the researcher chooses the most relevant ones (based on previous knowledge of the region, availability, etc.) and runs a series of experiments combining the available data in order to find the combination that provides the best prediction.