Chapter 11 – Satellite-Based Irradiance and Power Forecasting for the German Energy Market

Irradiance forecasts are fundamental to the prediction of power production from photovoltaic (PV) plants. Prediction is necessary to perform effective balancing of electricity demand and the variable and weather-dependent supply. Images from Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellites provide valuable information for forecasting clouds and solar irradiance several hours ahead using cloud-motion vectors (CMV). In this chapter we present our approach to deriving irradiance information from MSG images and to predicting the cloud situation by applying CMV. An evaluation of the irradiance forecast for single sites and regional averages on the basis of a 1 y dataset is presented. The CMV forecast shows superior performance in comparison to other methods such as numerical weather prediction (NWP) up to 5 h ahead. Additionally, an introduction to PV-power-prediction techniques is presented.