This Lessons Learnt Report outlines the key learnings Solcast has learnt in the six month period of October 2019 – April 2020 in regard to their involvement in the ARENA Short Term Forecasting trial.
Report extract
Solcast has deployed short-term forecasting solutions to eight Australian solar farms in this ARENA funded Project, and an additional eight solar farms outside the Project. The Project has demonstrated forecasts utilising sky-imager technology can improve forecast accuracy over the short-term, but that an ensemble forecasting approach considering multiple inputs is the preferred solution. Solcast has demonstrated reduced forecasting errors compared to ASEFS at all solar farms. Solcast found that configurable hardware options are preferred by solar farms, and that a cloud-hosted centralised forecasting system reduces forecast improvement iteration time and increases the speed of hardware and algorithm upgrades.