INESC TEC develops unique solar power forecasting system

In March, INESC TEC’s Centre for Power and Energy Systems (CPES) concluded project PREVSol (PREVisão da Produção de Energia Elétrica de Base SOLar), where the goal was to create a solar power forecasting system.

Developed in partnership with the Faculty of Science of the University of Lisbon (FCUL) and promoted by the company Prewind Lda., PREVSol focused on the development and operation of innovative statistic and electrical algorithms to make occasional forecasts and to predict uncertainty, considering a maximum time horizon of one week. A tool was also developed to support maintenance in a solar generation facility.

Currently, the final product generates operational forecasts at 16 kW of power, which corresponds to the photovoltaic panels in INESC TEC’s building (http://prevsol.prewind.eu/) and to solar parks in Portugal and Spain. This product is new on the market and will allow  Prewind Lda. to increase its number of forecasting service clients, and to promote its internationalisation.

With a duration of 15 months, the project, funded by the NSRF’s System to promote research and technological development (SI I&DT), was developed by Ricardo Bessa, Jorge Filipe, Dewan Fayzur and Jean Sumaili, researchers at CPES.

The INESC TEC researchers mentioned in this article are associated with the following partner institutions: INESC Porto.