Collaborative engagement with power sector stakeholders is a key aspect of a successful effort for developing or improving a generation forecasting system. A best practice is to form a “Technical Review Committee” (TRC) to help answer questions and identify additional sources of information. The TRC can be convened at regular intervals and members usually participate on a voluntary basis.
Main Points
The TRC should represent a diverse set of perspectives from industry, academia, policymakers, regulators and experts from the non-profit sector.- The TRC should include around 30 or more experts with relevant knowledge about power system operations, generation forecasting, power system communications and controls, load forecasting, wind and solar technologies, numerical weather prediction, power purchase agreements, and other relevant technical topics.
- Regulators and policymakers may have especially important roles to play, after grid operators and utilities, because they can establish some of the enabling conditions that increase the value of energy forecasting.
First, See This Figure
There are a number of power system stakeholders and experts who should be consulted in developing or improving a forecasting system. This table shows some of the stakeholders who should be included, along with their roles and responsibilities.
See: Excerpt from page 18 of Advanced Forecasting of Variable Renewable Power Generation by IRENA.
Next, Review This Example
Creating a plan or framework that prioritizes stakeholder engagement helps ensure that the needs of various stakeholders are considered and balanced in the development or improvement of a generation forecasting system.
In this example, a team of researchers formed a stakeholder committee (like your Technical Review Committee) made up of researchers, forecast providers, forecast users, and other individuals with an interest in solar forecast evaluation with the ability for stakeholders to join the committee on their website. For the first year, they gathered information from stakeholder meetings to create proposals for data sharing, use cases, metrics, and benchmark forecasts. They held a second stakeholder workshop to confirm decisions made, demonstrate functionality, and collect feedback on corrections and priorities.
The team held a two-hour workshop in June 2018 to collect user stories (i.e. statements of desired capability), discuss data protection concerns and forecast metrics, and to gather views on benchmark forecast capabilities. Following the workshop, we formed a stakeholder committee of researchers, forecast providers, forecast users and others with an interest in solar forecast evaluation — persons may join the stakeholder committee on the project website [2].
During the first year of the project, information gathered at the stakeholder meeting was used to formulate proposals for use cases, data sharing, metrics and benchmark forecasts. Proposals were circulated with the stakeholder committee for review and comment. For example, the user stories from the workshop were synthesized into proposed use cases which were iteratively refined by stakeholder review resulting in the procedural descriptions of the framework functionality (see Sect. IV); similar processes ensured that the structure and content of a data model for the framework, data sharing and protection policies, and the selection of benchmark forecasts and metrics all received stakeholder input and consensus. In addition, key stakeholders were engaged individually on the thorny issues of a common non-disclosure agreement and data sharing policies to ensure that proposals were likely to gain broad acceptance. The stakeholder committee also guided a glossary defining forecast terms.
A second Stakeholder Workshop which was open to committee members and other interested parties was held in June 2019. This workshop was used to confirm the decisions made to date, demonstrate the functionality implemented so far, and gather feedback on essential course corrections and work priorities.
Read excerpt from page 1 of The Solar Forecast Arbiter: An Open Source Evaluation Framework for Solar Forecasting by Sandia National Laboratory.
Finally, Read This
Though implementation of generation forecasting focuses on plant and system operations, policymakers and regulators are key stakeholders because of the important role they play in optimizing its benefits. Policy and regulatory design can incentivize the use of forecasting while also ensuring that it is included in an integrated approach to system operations. Whether dispatching takes place in a market framework or not, the operational principles and other considerations below are important for planning and optimizing VRE dispatch.
To enhance the operation of a power system with significant VRE shares, the regulatory and electricity market arrangements need to increase time granularity; in other words, the dispatch and scheduling time interval, the pricing of market time units, financial settlement periods, and the time span between gate closure and the real-time delivery of power should be reduced.
In this way, advanced weather forecasting methods, by delivering granular results and data closer to real time, become very important for VRE power generation. For instance, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas has reduced the dispatch time intervals from 15 minutes to 5 minutes, allowing updates in generation schedules until 10 minutes before the actual power dispatch. This change in rule has incentivised the use of better weather and generation forecasting methods and has resulted in reduction of wind curtailment due to better accuracy in generation forecasts 5 minutes before the actual generation, compared with the previous 15 minutes.
Simultaneously, VRE generators and system operators must be incentivised to produce accurate generation forecasts at different timescales (i.e. week ahead, day ahead, intraday), providing the same time granularity as that used in the electricity markets. Accurate forecasts engender different benefits to generators and system operators. For this reason, two types of forecast are needed: centralised forecasting for system operators to maintain overall reliability; and decentralised forecasting for VRE generators, enabling them to revise their schedules and dispatch instructions. System operators can also benefit from the decentralised forecasting of VRE generators if communication between these stakeholders is established and automatised. Penalties for significant deviations in generation forecasts, compared with actual generation, can be implemented to incentivise improving the accuracy of decentralised forecasts.
See excerpt from page 14 of Advanced Forecasting of Variable Renewable Power Generation by IRENA.
Suggested Actions & Next Steps
- Consider the stakeholders that need to be involved in a technical review committee. In addition to members of your grid operations group (or utility), who else should participate (large RE generation owners, regulators, policymakers, third-party provides of these services, independent third-party observers, including academics)? What role will each play in the process?
- Begin outreach to potential stakeholders to understand possible concerns and roadblocks for developing or improving your forecasting system.
- Create a Terms of Reference document that outlines the roles and responsibilities for stakeholders that will participate in the Technical Review Committee. Include timelines, key milestones, deliverables, and a breakdown of responsibilities for each party.
- Consider how you will convene the group. Will you meet in person, or over telephone or video conference?
- Contact relevant experts to formally invite them to participate in the TRC and confirm their participation.
- Establish regular, transparent communication and documentation processes.
- Begin organizing the TRC meetings.