Effectively Dispatchable Solar Power with Hierarchical Reconciliation and Firm Forecasting

The variable nature of solar power has hitherto been regarded as a major barrier preventing large-scale high-penetration solar energy into the power grid. Based on decades of research, particularly those advances made over the recent few years, it is now believed that dispatchable solar power is no longer a conception but will soon become techno-economically feasible. The policy-driven information exchange among the weather centers, grid operators, and photovoltaic plant owners is the key to realizing dispatchable solar power. In this paper, a five-step forecasting framework for enabling dispatchable solar power is introduced. Among the five steps, the first three, namely numerical weather prediction (NWP), forecast post-processing, and irradiance-to-power conversion, have long been familiar to most. The last two steps, namely hierarchical reconciliation and firm forecasting, are quite recent conceptions, which have yet to raise widespread awareness. The proposed framework is demonstrated through a case study on achieving effectively dispatchable solar power generation at plant and substation levels.