The Formal Assessment of a Collaborative Solar Forecasting Project

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), together with partners from other national laboratories, universities, and industry are taking part in the US Department of Energy (DOE) SunShot program by building, deploying, and assessing the SunCast solar power forecasting system. Through this project, a full suite of metrics were identified in a collaborative effort between the NCAR verification team lead by the NCAR/Research Applications Laboratory and the IBM verification team led by National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The statistical suite includes measures of accuracy, variability, ramp events, uncertainty and probability. Additionally, synthesis tools were adopted to allow the end users to better assess forecast skill.  These metrics are being applied systematically to forecasts developed by the two teams. The metrics project began by taking into account the needs of the industry stakeholders and culminated with assessments of the forecast skill through traditional metrics used to assess weather forecasts (e.g., mean absolute error, root mean square error, false alarm ratio, probability of detection) as well as the economic impact of improved solar forecasting. This presentation will focus on the formal assessment of the system components and fully integrated power forecasts. Emphasis will be placed on where each component adds value.