The primary objectives of this effort are:

1) to reduce power system operation cost by committing appropriate amount of energy resources and reserves

2) to provide operators a prediction of the generation fleet’s behavior in real time for realistic photovoltaic (PV) penetration scenarios while keeping the current level of NERC reliability for increasing levels renewable penetration.

PNNL’s ESIOS operational and planning tool will be applied to and tested in the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) service region with realistic forecasting errors for both solar generation and load.

The proposed methodology includes the following steps:

• Clustering analysis on the expected solar variability per region for the SMUD system
• Day-ahead (DA) and real-time (RT) load forecasts for the whole service areas and within clusters
• 1-year of intra-hour Clean Power Research (CPR) forecasts for cluster centers
• 1-year of smart re-forecasting CPR forecasts in real-time for determination of irreducible errors
• Uncertainty quantification for integrated solar-load for both distributed and central station (selected locations within service region) PV generation

The uncertainty quantification will be implemented in the operational tool in order to reduce power system operation cost by committing appropriate amounts of energy resources and reserves, as well as to provide operators a prediction of the generation fleet’s behavior in real time for different scenarios.

Journal Publications

H.T.C. Pedro and C.F.M. Coimbra (2015) “Nearest-Neighbor Methodology for Prediction of Intra-Hour Global Horizontal and Direct Normal Irradiances,” Renewable Energy (80), pp. 770- 782.

A. Kaur, L. Nonnenmacher and C.F.M. Coimbra (2015) “Net Load Forecasting for High Renewable Energy Penetration Grids,” submitted.

A. Zagouras, H.T.C. Pedro and C.F.M. Coimbra (2015) “On the Role of Lagged Exogenous Variables and Spatio-Temporal Correlations in Improving the Accuracy of Solar Forecasting Methods,” Renewable Energy (78) pp. 203-218.

A. Zagouras, H.T.C. Pedro and C.F.M. Coimbra (2014) “Clustering the Solar Resource for Grid Management in Island Mode,” Solar Energy (110), pp. 507-518.

A. Zagouras, R.H. Inman and C.F.M. Coimbra (2014) “On the Determination of Coherent Solar Microclimates for Utility Planning and Operations,” Solar Energy (102), pp. 173-188.

Technical Presentations

C.F.M. Coimbra (2015) "Generating and Using Local Solar Forecasts (from 5 Minutes to 72 Hours Ahead)", Invited Talk, 2015 CPUC Workshop on Data for Distribution Resources Planning, San Francisco, CA.

C.F.M. Coimbra (2014) "Operational Solar Forecasting System for Horizons Covering 5 Minutes to 72 Hours Ahead", Invited Talk, 2014 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Society, San Francisco, CA.

C.F.M. Coimbra (2015) "Clustering Techniques for Improved Solar Forecasting and Utility Operations", Invited Talk, 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society, Phoenix, AZ.