Direct marketing of forecasts for wind- and solar electricity

If electricity from wind parks or photovoltaic plats should be sold at an optimal price in the electricity market, particularly precise forecasts are required. The better operators and traders can predict the electricity quantities that they will generate, the lower are the reserves that need to be facilitated. Furthermore, the expensive purchase of balance energy can be avoided in this manner.

The actual values, meaning the effectively produced amount of electricity of a photovoltaic plant, for example, are determined through a complex calculation procedure and provided in the online portal of enercast. The calculation procedure has been developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for wind energy and energy system technology (IWES).

In order to avoid vast expenses for the purchase of balance energy, and to also realize additional gains, enercast offers intraday-, day-ahead- and real-time forecasts* for electricity traders. The latter can then calculate at a precision of 15 minutes, and register the available volumes for direct sale.

The central attribute of the electricity trade, in the day-ahead-marketing, is that the electricity quantities need to be communicated to the transmission grid operator and the FEX in Leipzig ahead of time– one day ahead. The quantities, in megawatt hours, must be accurate for each of the 24 hours- rounded to one digit after the comma.

In order to trade with fluctuating renewable energy at the exchange at all, one needs a forecast of these energy generators for the following days. Especially for improvements in the forecast quality for electricity trade, the legislator allows a significantly higher management bonus for the volatile energy sources, such as wind and solar, than for water power or biomass.