Climate-Energy: New weather-climate service predicts electricity production from renewable sources
1/8/2019
Predicting electricity production from renewable sources up to three months for an increasingly efficient management of the electricity grid. It’s the objective of an innovative weather-climate service developed by the European project "Sub-seasonal to Seasonal Climate Predictions for Energy" (S2S4E), funded by the Horizon2020 program with almost 5 million euro and coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in collaboration with 11 European partners [1] including ENEA, and energy operators such as the French EDF.
The online platform of the project can provide weather and climate forecasts from one week up to three months, providing electricity companies with information on rainfall, river flow, wind speed, temperature and solar radiation.
“This service is the first real attempt, at the international level, to put current scientific knowledge on climate at the service of the energy market, with the aim of increasing energy production from renewable sources and guaranteeing the safety of electricity grids from blackout and supply intermittency due to the variability of renewables", Irene Cionni of the ENEA Laboratory "Climate modeling and Impacts", explained. She also pointed out how this weather and climate model takes into account climate variability, unlike the current ones, based only on past values.
"At ENEA we dealt with production of photovoltaic energy, developing a model that, by calibrating and improving the forecast of solar radiation through statistical methods, enables us to estimate future production of energy - from a week to three months - with a high level of reliability ", Cionni, also scientific manager of the project for ENEA, said.
In addition to the energy sector, the new climate service could also interest insurance companies and companies dealing with tourism and agriculture. "In general, knowing in advance how the weather changes as a result of climate change will allow us to better prepare for the arrival of extreme weather events, plan interventions and manage emergencies, protect essential infrastructures and entire production sectors," the researcher concluded.
For more information:
www.s2s4e.eu/dst
Irene Cionni, ENEA – Laboratory Climate Modelling and Impacts,
Franco Catalano, ENEA - Laboratory Climate Modelling and Impacts, franco.catalano@enea.it