The Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) has launched a new solar and wind power production service that converts sunshine and wind forecasts into kilowatt-hours.
The forecasts are free to access on the FMI website and provide a helpful tool for Finnish households and communities that use solar and wind power.
Anders Lindfors, a research professor at the FMI, said, “The information enables users to anticipate when plenty of solar power will be available so that they can time their consumption accordingly. On the other hand, consumption can be reduced if cloudy and windless weather has been forecast because it means that wind power will be scarce.”
The solar power production forecast shows sunshine as the power produced by a solar power plant at different locations over the following few days.
“Based on the information in the weather forecast model, it is first estimated how much solar radiation will fall on the inclined surface of the solar panel,” explained Lindfors. “Because the efficiency of solar panels does not depend only on the radiation conditions but also on the temperature of the panels, the efficiency corresponding to the weather conditions at a given time is then calculated from the radiation, temperature and wind data. The forecast solar energy production is obtained by combining all this information.”
The wind power production forecast shows the total power production of wind turbines in Finland over the following few days.
“The forecast is obtained by combining the forecast wind data with the location data of Finland’s wind turbines. In addition, the data on the hub height and the power curve of each known wind turbine in Finland are used in the calculation,” added Lindfors.
The solar and wind power production forecasts are based on the weather data produced by the joint Nordic MetCoOp weather forecasting system.
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