Greening the Grid Webinar: Implementing Wind and Solar Power Forecasting

On April 21 2016, USAID and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in partnership with the Clean Energy Solutions Center, hosted a webinar on Implementing Wind and Solar Power Forecasting. This webinar is part of the GreeningTheGrid.org toolkit, a USAID and NREL collaboration designed to support countries in integrating renewable energy into the power system.

In power systems working to integrate high levels of renewable energy, the variability and uncertainty of solar and wind energy can pose a challenge to power system operation. Wind and solar forecasts, and analysis of meteorological data more broadly, are critical to reducing the uncertainty associated with variable renewable energy generation. Accurate forecasts not only support the safe and reliable operation of the grid, but they also encourage cost-effective operation of systems with significant wind and solar generation by improving the scheduling of generation and reducing the use of reserves.

This webinar introduced considerations associated with advancing the use of wind and solar forecasts to more efficiently integrate variable renewable energy into the grid. Discussion topics included:
How wind and solar forecasting enhance power system operations
How wind and solar forecasts are produced
Approaches to structuring forecasting programs and the collection of necessary data
Policy and other actions to support forecasting

The webinar was presented by Dr. Bri-Mathias Hodge from NREL and was followed by an interactive question and answer session with the audience, moderated by Dr. Jennifer Leisch from USAID.