Cloud-Edge Collaborative Large Models for Robust Photovoltaic Power Forecasting

Abstract

Photovoltaic (PV) power forecasting in edge-enabled grids requires balancing forecasting accuracy, robustness under weather-driven distribution shifts, and strict latency constraints. Local specialized models are efficient for routine conditions but often degrade under rare ramp events and unseen weather patterns, whereas always relying on cloud-side large models incurs substantial communication delay and cloud overhead. To address this challenge, we propose a risk-aware cloud-edge collaborative framework for latency-sensitive PV forecasting. The framework integrates a site-specific expert predictor for routine cases, a lightweight edge-side model for enhanced local inference, and a cloud-side large retrieval model that provides matched historical context when needed through a retrieval-prediction pipeline. A lightweight screening module estimates predictive uncertainty, out-of-distribution risk, weather mutation intensity, and model disagreement, while a Lyapunov-guided router selectively escalates inference to the edge-small or cloud-assisted branches under long-term latency, communication, and cloud-usage constraints. The outputs of the activated branches are combined through adaptive fusion. Experiments on two real-world PV datasets demonstrate a favorable overall trade-off among forecasting accuracy, routing quality, robustness, and system efficiency.