Systematical evaluation of solar energy supply forecasts

The capacity of renewable energy sources constantly increases world-wide and challenges the maintenance of the electric balance between power demand and supply. To allow for a better integration of solar energy supply into the power grids, a lot of research was dedicated to the development of precise forecasting approaches. However, there is still no straightforward and easy-to-use recommendation for a standardized forecasting strategy. In this paper, a classification of solar forecasting solutions proposed in the literature is provided for both weather- and energy forecast models. Subsequently, we describe our idea of a standardized forecasting process and the typical parameters possibly influencing the selection of a specific model. We discuss model combination as an optimization option and evaluate this approach comparing different statistical algorithms against flexible hybrid models in a case study.