Historical archive. This article preserves the original publication from 2016-11-03. Product capabilities, partners and project status described here reflect that date.
Whether for wind power or photovoltaic systems, for both types of renewable energy it is important to know what will be fed in in the future. Thus large-scale operators of transmission and distribution networks, as well as municipalities and energy suppliers, need to know at a lower level how much electricity they can feed into their grid from renewable energy.
Grid control – making energy predictable
Wind and sun are not constant variables – on sunny days at weekends, for example, when industry needs fewer resources, more solar power is available than on rainy weekdays. But current and imminently expected feed-in volumes of solar power are hard to identify. How do network operators know how much of the share of renewable energy is to be fed into the grid at any given time?
Regional generation forecasts help grid operators anticipate weather-dependent feed-in and plan network operation. Their contribution to balancing and security depends on the wider operating process.
Prediction for wind and PV
enercast forecasts the energy produced by wind power or PV systems for a specific area in precise 15 minute slots and up to 240 hours into the future – in Germany and worldwide. The basis for this is the enercast PV measuring network, satellite data and data from network operators. The specific performance of an installation always depends on the size, the location and the meteorological conditions in the relevant region.
Quarterly forecast
Regional forecasts address week-ahead, day-ahead and intraday planning. The original 2016 publication also discussed real-time PV forecasts and automated delivery. For the detailed historical product description, see the linked original article. Current delivery intervals and evaluation results should be confirmed for the product under consideration.
Trading on the electricity market
However, it is not only for network operators that the regional forecasts of enercast are of interest: traders on stock exchanges also benefit from high-quality forecasts for whole countries or sub-regions. They trade day-ahead or intraday with short-term tradable electricity from renewable energy.
Thanks to enercast forecasts, they are able to assess how much wind and solar energy will be available on the electricity market on the same or the next day and, consequently, their trade strategy. The higher the forecast quality, the more profitably the electricity generated by PV systems and wind parks can be traded.