Hourly forecast of solar radiation up to 48h with two runs of weather research forecast model over Italy

Growth and vast usage in renewable energy implies better hourly and daily planning for reliable and constant renewable energy distribution. In this sense, the forecast of renewable energy becomes more and more important. In this work, we used the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) to forecast solar radiation. We run two forecast simulations with WRF and WRF-Solar model. Models have been running on daily basis to forecast solar radiation up to 48h with hourly outputs. In this paper we elaborated one summer month of 2017 with both model forecasts compared with ground measured data for solar irradiance at one location in Italy (lat 42°02.5’ North; lon 12°18.4’ East). Both models represents in good manner global irradiance with RMSE for a selected maximum of a daily range of about 13% while direct (25%) and diffuse (40%) solar radiation obtained by models differ from measured values.