SOLARIS Shortlisted for Best Research Project at the 2025 Education Awards
We’re proud to announce that the SOLARIS project — Scalable Optimization and Learning for Advanced Renewable Integration Systems — led by researchers from UCD’s School of Computer Science, has been shortlisted in the “Best Research Project” category at the 2025 Education Awards.
The project, which ran from 2020 to 2024, represents a groundbreaking step toward solving one of society’s most pressing challenges: how to make renewable energy reliable, accessible, and scalable for a sustainable future.
Addressing a Global Energy Challenge
As the world moves away from fossil fuels, integrating renewable sources like solar power into national electricity grids poses a unique challenge. Solar energy, while clean and abundant, is inherently variable — cloud cover, time of day, and unpredictable weather can all impact the amount of energy produced. This variability complicates energy planning and grid stability.
SOLARIS tackles this head-on by designing AI-powered tools that help energy operators accurately predict how much solar energy will be generated in the near future, and how it aligns with electricity demand.
Scientific Breakthroughs from UCD
At the heart of SOLARIS is a suite of innovations combining artificial intelligence, computer vision, and climate data analytics. These include:
- LAMSkyCam: a low-cost, ground-based sky imager developed to monitor cloud patterns in real-time. Unlike expensive commercial systems, LAMSkyCam is 70% cheaper, making this technology more accessible for widespread deployment.
- Advanced Solar Forecasting Models: By blending satellite data with high-resolution sky imagery, the team created a novel forecasting model that improves short-term solar irradiance predictions by over 10% compared to traditional benchmarks. This enables grid operators to better prepare for dips or surges in solar power.
- Electricity Demand Clustering: Using data from over 300 households, the team applied advanced statistical models to identify typical energy use patterns. This allows for more efficient energy distribution and planning at a community scale.
Figure: Influence of cloud cover on solar irradiance. The lower images, captured using a ground-based sky imager illustrate how cloud variations impact solar output, informing the forecasting models.
These scientific breakthroughs have already found real-world relevance. The forecasting system, for instance, helps ensure a stable electricity supply — even when the sun doesn’t shine.
UCD’s Role and Global Collaboration
This project was primarily driven by (opens in a new window)Dr Mayank Jain, during his PhD at UCD’s School of Computer Science, under the supervision of (opens in a new window)Dr Soumyabrata Dev. Dr Jain, now an AI researcher at EirGrid (Ireland’s national electricity grid operator), designed and implemented key components of SOLARIS, including the LAMSkyCam and forecasting framework. His academic work — including over 20 peer-reviewed publications — laid the groundwork for his current role at the forefront of Ireland’s energy transition.
Dr Dev provided strategic leadership and interdisciplinary direction, ensuring that the research remained grounded in real-world impact while pushing the boundaries of scientific discovery.
The success of SOLARIS was also bolstered by international partnerships, including Utrecht University (Netherlands), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), and the Illinois Advanced Research Center in Singapore. These collaborations brought diverse expertise spanning energy policy, AI, and computer vision.
A Model for the Future
SOLARIS is more than just an academic exercise. It directly contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy. The technologies developed in this project offer a scalable and cost-effective path for integrating solar energy into grids worldwide.
With recognition from top-tier journals, presentations at major international conferences, and adoption into real-world systems, SOLARIS exemplifies the transformative potential of university research to shape a greener, more sustainable future.
Published 7 April 2025