How Solcast creates solar irradiance data from satellite imagery
This article introduces the basics on how Solcast creates its solar irradiance data including how it uses satellite images and solar radiation models.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Introducing Super-Rapid Update Forecasting for Solar Farms
How Solcast is using sky cameras and live SCADA information to improve short range solar power forecasting and solar irradiance forecasting
Author: James Luffman
Behind the meter solar power forecasting and PV fleet visibility
As soon as penetrations of behind the meter solar PV sites reach 1-2% of total load, forecasting the power output of these PV systems starts to become critical for efficient market and network operation. Without including a behind the meter solar forecast into the overall load forecasting operations, errors in the daily load forecast start to appear. Thankfully, Solcast's Grid Aggregations are easy to set-up, are highly accurate, and can help solve this challenging problem!
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
The limitations of numerical weather models for solar irradiance forecasting
A brief look at where the use of numerical weather models falls short for solar irradiance forecasting
Author: James Luffman
API Toolkit Launch Makes Accessing Solar Data Easier Than Ever
Starting in April 2019, all registered Solcast users will arrive into our new API Toolkit on login/registration. There, you'll find a set of live demonstration sites for the data product categories relevant to your experience, and be able to create new sites, access recent, live and forecast data, or download historical data at the site of your choosing.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Self Forecasting for Eight Australian Solar Farms
Eight of Australia’s large-scale solar farms will partner with Solcast to utilise our Super Rapid Update forecasting product for 5-minute ahead solar power forecasting.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
The Importance Of Choosing Modern Short-Term Solar Power Forecasting Solutions In India
India has shown great leadership with its aggressive solar installation targets. With its state distribution companies now due to enforce penalties for inaccurate solar forecasts, it would be quite wise to also show leadership in its implementation of its solar forecasting technologies and network/market operations by choosing modern approaches.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Short-term solar forecasting for utility solar sites: core business or distraction?
Solar farm operators are coming under growing pressure to help maintain network stability by providing accurate generation forecasts. As our CTO Dr. Nick Engerer writes, innovations in short-term forecasting are providing operators with new options for making this task less of a distraction from their core business
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
How Solcast is better suited to solar energy applications than generic weather APIs like DarkSky
Generic weather APIs can be cool and cheap, but there are some fundamental reasons why they don’t work well for solar energy
Author: James Luffman
Free PV system performance estimate
All around the world, solar owners are wondering the same thing: Are my solar panels performing as expected? How can I monitor my PV system's performance? Are my solar panels working? Use our FREE PV system performance estimator to find out!
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Solar Irradiance Data - Everywhere You Need It
No source of information is more important for the solar energy industry than solar irradiance data! Our team believes we have the most accurate and most widely available historical, live and forecast solar radiation data available, and we are committed to improving it every week.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
FREE Solar Radiation Historical Data for Researchers
Solcast wants to give you the data you need for your research work for FREE (no cash required!). As a researcher, we'll provide you with access to our Recent and Historical Solar Irradiance Data for non-commercial research use.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Rooftop Solar Forecasting for One or Many Thousands of PV Sites
We offer a simple PV power conversion model, which connects our global, rapid-update cloud nowcasting system with the location and installed capacity of the target PV system. We then generate an estimate of the future power output of each site, which you can instantly access via our API
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
A Solar Irradiance Data API Built with Users in Mind
You can get started with the Solcast API services in less than five minutes. Sign-up for our API and instantly access our global solar forecasting (0-7 days) and estimated actuals dataset (last 7 days). You can also model and forecast utility scale solar farms, create your own grid aggregations and generate forecasts for individual rooftop PV sites trial upon request. Historical data downloads of up to 10 years of data are also available!
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Solar Power Forecasting for Utility Scale Farms
Solcast have worked diligently to enable the hard-working folks who are managing, operating and deploying utility scale solar farm sites by delivering on an easy to use and easy to understand forecasting solution via API
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Grid Aggregations for Behind the Meter Solar Forecasting
We use our rapid update cloud and irradiance modelling capability and combine it with information about the spatial distribution and installed capacities of your PV fleet to deliver live, forecast and historical estimates fleet performance.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Global Solar Irradiance Forecasts and Historical Datasets
When we first launched the Solcast API in early 2017, the Solcast team was excited to learn more about the market for historical and forecast solar irradiance and solar power data services. Now, 18 months later, with nearly a thousand users across five continents, we see no better way to launch our company blog than by thanking those users for their commitment to the integration of solar energy, and for being such forward-thinking early adopters of the Solcast API. So - Thank you!
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Publication of a Research Grade Solar PV Power Dataset
A free high quality dataset of PV system power measurements from 1,287 residential installations across Australia
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Solar Forecasting Webinar with Western Power and Australian National University
Next week, our CTO Dr. Nick Engerer will travel to Perth to join our collaborators at Western Power to host a webinar reviewing the rooftop solar related challenges in West Australia
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
High Resolution Solar Forecasting for South Australia Power Networks
Solcast is now committed to delivering the world's highest-resolution solar forecasting technologies to SAPN by the end of this year. Allowing SAPN to finally have the LV network visibility they require for managing & planning for their network operations.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
High Penetration Renewables: The Weather is Our Fuel
It is becoming very important to pay great attention to the *detail* of how the wind & solar resource will change over the course of a given day in order to appropriately manage the balance of supply and demand
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Solar Forecasting Under Complicated Cloud Cover Conditions
There were quite complicated cloud cover conditions over South Australia yesterday, where solar energy penetrations are amongst the highest in the world
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Solar Energy is an Exponential Technology
Solar is an exponential technology. What this means, is that its price performance is falling on an exponential curve and its growth globally is growing upwards in the same fashion.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Behind-the-Meter Solar PV Forecasting in West Australia
Behind the meter solar PV power forecasting is an essential tool for accurate supply and demand balance for grid operators. And with rooftop PV installations in Western Australia growing quickly, load forecasting is becoming increasingly difficult for our partner Western Power.
Author: James Luffman
Forecasting Collective Solar PV Ramping Events
When a few hundreds of megawatts of solar generation undergoes a negative ramp event, the energy markets see a sudden jump in the regional demand and local distribution networks will see changes in network loads/voltages in their control rooms. This leads to challenges managing our electricity markets and networks in areas where large amounts of solar are installed.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Low Rooftop Solar PV Power Outputs in South Australia
This example highlights the important of having quality solar forecasting data for rooftop solar sites included in the load forecasting models for areas with high penetrations of rooftop solar.
Author: James Luffman
Seeing Solar Intermittency as Opportunity
But I want to challenge you to change your mindset, and change the game. Let's view intermittency as the opportunity it really is. Technology can solve the intermittency "problem" and the companies that do so will create value. The obstacle is the way.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Solar Forecasting for Energy Storage and Electricity Networks
My Solar and Storage 2017 talk entitled "Solar forecasting support for Australia energy networks & markets via the Solcast API" will cover our experience working with 11 Aussie distribution networks and our vision for providing them solutions to solar intermittency.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
The important role of solar forecasting in Australia
With such high penetrations of small-scale solar present across Australia and several new large solar farms in the pipeline, Solcast believes that solar forecasting technology will be important for maintaining predictability and stability in our power system.
Author: Dr. Nick Engerer
Solar Forecasting Accuracy Transparency
In my role as CEO of Solcast, I've been directing my team to think more like the customer, and as a result, Solcast has been working to make the accuracy of its solar power forecasting highly visible. We are now storing our 1-hour ahead forecasts for everywhere in the world, and making them available to our customers & users in real time.
Author: James Luffman