Solar Farm Solutions & the Australian Energy Sector
- $781k Funded by ARENA
- $2.57m Total project cost
Summary
The Solar Farm Solutions & the Australian Energy Sector project aims to operationalise, deploy and improve self-forecasting technology for up to eight Australian solar farms and to submit dispatch forecasts to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) to reduce costs to large-scale solar farms.
How the project works
The Solar Farm Solutions & the Australian Energy Sector project will operationalise, deploy and improve Solcast’s self-forecasting technology, and submit these forecasts to AEMO via project partner, Dispatch Solutions. It will be accomplished through a staged process of testing, trialling and transitioning customers to a commercial service.
The forecasting technology will leverage Solcast’s existing global satellite nowcasting system, set-up live SCADA feeds to the Solcast API, and install low cost sky-imagers onsite to train and test 5-minute ahead forecasting technologies. Once testing and training is complete, the project will operationalise individualised forecast models for each solar farm site, providing these to Dispatch Solutions, who will submit them to AEMO for operational use.
Learn more
Report: Solcast Nowcasting Lessons Learnt Report 3
This Lessons Learnt Report outlines the key from the period between April 2020 – September 2020.
Report: Solcast Nowcasting Lessons Learnt Report 2
This Lessons Learnt Report outlines the key from the period between October 2019 – April 2020.
Media Release: $9 million Funding to Enhance Short Term Forecasting of Wind and Solar Farms
Solar and wind farms will trial providing their own short-term generation forecasts, under a funding initiative by ARENA in partnership with AEMO.
Report: Solcast Nowcasting Lessons Learnt Report 1
This Lessons Learnt Report outlines the key from the period between April 2019 – October 2019.
Report: Short-Term Forecasting Trial on the NEM Progress
This report presents a summary of the insights and progress from initial reports submitted by the 11 participants of the Short-Term Forecasting (STF) trial that is taking place between March 2019 to mid 2021.
Area of innovation
This will be accomplished through a collaborative endeavour between Solcast (project lead) and partner Dispatch Solutions for the purposes of deploying, testing, improving and live trialling dispatch forecasts. Specifically, the project will:
- operationalise Solcast’s super-rapid update utility scale solar forecasting technologies
- deploy these forecasting technologies to eight participating solar farms
- install low cost sky-imagers at participating solar farms
- train a site-specific forecast model for each generator
- make iterative improvements to the solar farm forecasting technologies
- submit test forecasts to AEMO’s API framework to finalise dataflows and establish confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the forecasting models
- complete a live dispatch forecasting trial on the NEM for each generator
- provide +5 minute to +7 day forecasts for the Gannawarra solar farm to the EnergyAustralia trading team to devise new dispatch/charging strategies for the co-located Gannawarra Energy Storage System.
A key outcome will be the removal of several barriers to the widespread adoption of self-forecasting technologies, particularly through efforts to establish transparency around potential reductions in Causer Pays Factors (CPF) for solar farm operators. CPF are costs that solar farm operators/owners incur via forecasting errors that occur in day to day operations of these facilities.
Benefit
This project could benefit solar farm owners and operators by reducing the costs of operating large scale solar farms in the National Electricity Market (NEM). This will be achieved through a substantial reduction in the CPF that solar farm operators incur through the current AEMO provided Australian Solar Energy Forecasting System (ASEFS). Cost-savings of more than 20 per cent are projected, which could increase the cost competitiveness of large-scale solar farms operating in the NEM.
Read more
ARENAWIRE Blogs
Wind and solar forecasting trial looks into the future
A trial of forecasting technology has been launched to help predict the future output from wind and solar farms, which varies depending on the weather and time of day.
