Smart4RES

European power systems are facing major changes as a result, among other factors, of the massive penetration of weather-dependent Renewable Energy Sources (RES) generation. The continuously increasing share of RES in the electricity generation mix of several countries and the intermittent nature of RES generation brings several challenges to power system operation. Short-term forecasting of RES generation – a few minutes up to days ahead – is a key prerequisite for the secure and economic operation of power systems with high RES penetration.

The Smart4RES project aims to develop and validate next-generation instruments and modelling tools. Together, these should enable a further – also economic – increase in RES forecasting performance, taking into account the entire value chain. Thus, the already high quality of the forecast is to be optimised through the cooperation of industry and research and by considering the complete process chain: starting with the collection of data at the weather model up to the end-use application in the integration of RES into the electricity grids and markets.

energy & meteo systems was mainly involved in the application and validation of improved weather model forecasts for the operational wind and solar power forecast as well as in the development and application of methods to improve the short-term forecast. One notable example is the use of sky camera images which results in a 20% performance gain for the ultra-short-term forecast (15 to 30 min ahead).

The European consortium includes a total of twelve partners from six countries, including the German companies energy & meteo systems and DLR, the Dutch DNV-GL and Whiffle, the French Armines and Meteo France, and the Danish DTU. The project, coordinated by MINES ParisTEch, ran from November 2019 and was completed in April 2023.