ARENA to Provide Funding to Enhance Short Term Forecasting of Wind and Solar Farms

The trial comprises at least 45 percent of the National Electricity Market’s (NEM’s) registered wind and solar capacity, which collectively provides a total of 3.5 GW of renewable electricity generation.

ARENA’s funding will help to explore the potential for wind and solar farms to provide their own, more accurate, forecasts of their output into AEMO’s central dispatch system.

The projects will enable further capability development, and provide valuable information to the market on delivering forecasts on a five-minute basis. Forecasting technology and factors that affect the accuracy of forecasts in different weather, operational conditions and geographies will also be investigated.

AEMO is currently responsible for forecasting how much electricity will be generated by wind and solar farms, the output of which varies depending on the weather and time of day. If these supply forecasts are wrong or generators can’t meet their target, it can result in power system instability and higher operating costs.

Wind and solar farms are penalized for not meeting a required output level or can be required to curtail their generation to match an overly conservative forecast.

Under the market changes that AEMO has facilitated as part of this initiative, all wind and solar farms registered in the NEM will be able to submit their own five-minute ahead forecasts to AEMO, for use in central dispatch in order to improve the accuracy of market outcomes. The ARENA-funded trial will be exploring the benefits that this new capability brings to the system.

The portfolio of 11 projects will involve a range of weather forecasting technologies including onsite cloud cameras that can predict the timing and impact of a passing cloud on a solar farm, wind speed radars, Japanese weather satellites, infrared, crunching of Bureau of Meteorology data and machine learning algorithms.

“We are extremely pleased to see the collaboration between market participants, forecasting service providers and ARENA to deliver highly innovative solutions to the renewable energy sector,” said AEMO’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Audrey Zibelman.

“Weather is the fuel for an ever-increasing proportion of the electricity generated across Australia, so it is vitally important that we foster innovation and rapid development of world leading technologies and services. As the market operator, we require the best possible information in real-time to manage the secure and reliable delivery of energy to Australian consumers, 24/7,” said Zibelman.