Metrics for Solar Forecasts

Assessment and comparison of solar forecasts requires agreement about the measures of quality. The process of establishing metrics for the Department of Energy Solar Forecasting project involves assessment of both people and data. Early communication with stakeholders was undertaken to determine their needs and identify use cases. A set of metrics were selected based on the users' needs, the type of forecast, and the nature of the observations. The metrics to be presented have been tested to determine if they are useful, informative, and consistent on a large sample of data. To increase ease of use, software tools to make computation of the metrics easy, consistent, and correct are under development. These tools will be released as part of the Model Evaluation Tools (MET) verification software package. Finally, education and community support will be provided to all users regarding implementation and interpretation of the metrics and software.