Benchmark of eight commercial solutions for deterministic intra-day solar forecast

Abstract

Continuous increase of the production of photovoltaic energy requires precise forecasting to ensure grid stability. This paper presents a detailed benchmark of eight commercial forecasting solutions for intra-day solar forecasts. The comparison was carried out on a period of six months, from November to May 2021, on seven different PV plants located in different countries of the northern hemisphere. Performance evaluation metrics MAE, RMSE and MBE are used in order to analyze the forecasting precision. It is shown that forecasting solar power remains challenging, as shown by the important dispersion between the actors that we have observed.