Solution & Technology
Use of intra-hour solar forecasting in an experimental power plant in Lyon
11 abril 2015
ERDF (the French DSO) is using SteadyEye in an experiment in Lyon to plan the production of several rooftop installations located in a 5 km radius area from the camera.
Several difficulties are making this forecast quite complicated:
– The distance between the camera (located at an ERDF sub-station) and the locations of each photovoltaic power plants
– A limited information on the characteristics of each of the solar installations
– The shading effects of close masks, since the power plants are in an urbanized area
Nevertheless, we achieve very good results. A single SW-02 Sky Imager can cover a 20 km2 area.
This report is very encouraging for the DSO’s which have to manage networks including a large number of distributed PV (DPV) installations. Thanks to steadyEye, they will be able to anticipate quick variations of solar production and act accordingly.
They also have the possibility of integrate even more rooftop installations while reducing their operating costs!
The graph below shows the results obtained during three consecutive days for which the chosen forecasted time horizon is 15 minutes ahead.
The first day is very sunny, and the following ones are anticipating significant solar production variations :
