Ukraine keywords: In this post you'll learn about:

• Прогнозування роботи сонячної електростанції
• прогнозування сонячної енергії
• дані сонячної радіації
• сонячна енергія завтра

Solar energy in Ukraine

Solar power has been growing exponentially in Ukraine, passing 5GW in early 2020 from a base of less than 1GW prior to 2018. The recent growth has been driven by reductions in PV technology costs, and also by a generous local feed-in tariff scheme.

Map of solar potential and installations (UKRENERGO)

Solar radiation resource in Ukraine

The available solar resource in Ukraine is significant, particularly in the south, where annual solar irradiation can exceed 1500 kWh per square metre. Southern regions also have less snow cover in winter, with snow cover on less than 50% of days in mid-winter. Clouds are the dominant driver of solar production variability, and a wide range of cloud systems are experienced over Ukraine, including frontal systems, convective clouds, and fog or stratus clouds.

Map of solar irradiance over Ukraine at midday on 20th February, 2020, showing impacts of clouds on the available solar resource.

The importance of solar power forecasting in Ukraine

Solar Power Forecasting is essential for successful grid integration of increasing amounts of renewable energy. Accurate forecasts can help with day-ahead bidding of power, by allowing larger bids and/or reducing imbalance or accuracy penalties. Accurate solar forecasts are also helpful intra-day, for forecast revisions or re-bids by solar asset operators, and for system operators for balancing purposes including the minimisation of plant curtailments.

Solar forecasting methods best suited for Ukraine

For solar asset owners and operators, there are two common approaches to establishing solar power forecasting.

The first is to subscribe to a solar power forecasting service completely made by a vendor. This approach works well provided that plant specifications are well described, and the power curves can be optimised via machine learning approaches (e.g. "Tuning" as carried out by Solcast).

The second approach is to subscribe to a solar radiation and weather forecasting service, and use internal capabilities to build the conversions from radiation to power. This approach can be successful, but requires strong internal capabilities, since the conversions from radiation to power are highly non-linear and the plant and weather condition impacts are numerous.

Matching solar forecasting capability in Ukraine with the market

In Ukraine, new regulation is increasing the requirement for solar power forecasting, particularly day-ahead forecasting. The most important attributes for successful and accurate solar power forecasting in Ukraine are: (1) use of a range of different weather models, to capture the different possibilities day ahead; (2) machine learning improvement of weather models to learn their systematic cloud and radiation errors; and (3) accurate power modelling based on plant specifications and use of production data during recent months or years.

Solcast allows you to create your own solar power forecast

Solcast allows asset owners or operators to add their own solar plants to the Solcast system using their web browser, and instantly start using and evaluating forecasts. The process takes only a few minutes and requires no credit card. Forecasts can be downloaded to CSV for analysis, and recent forecast accuracy over the site can be displayed on a graph. When the forecast goes into operations, a credit card is required for monthly subscription fees, and the Solcast API makes integration and submission of forecasts easy to automate.

The above is an example of a Ukrainian utility scale solar farm setup for forecasting in the Solcast API Toolkit.

Solcast also provides live and forecast solar irradiance data as input to your own power forecasting methods

Solcast also provides direct access to solar irradiance data via API. User can learn how to access these data using their web browser, where they can download sample data and begin evaluating forecasts. Forecasts can be downloaded to CSV, JSON or XML for analysis.

Are you a solar farm owner or operator in Ukraine?

Solcast has made it very easy for Ukrainian solar farm operators to access high quality solar power forecasting data. Everyone who creates an API Toolkit account can create their own utility scale solar farm forecast and try it for free. If you have access to PV Power measurement data, you can upload it in the API Toolkit to further improve the forecast.

Learn More:

• Solcast's Utility Scale Solar Farm Forecasts
• Solar irradiance forecasting to build your own power forecast
• Learn about our live & forecast data methods
• Create your free API Toolkit account