Project Description

• Marine Layer Forecasts: Marine Layer clouds that impact California are low altitude stratus clouds that form over the adjacent ocean waters. Once formed, they may be advected by the wind over land areas. Stratus type clouds are sheet like clouds with close to horizontally uniform base and top. They generally extend for large distances horizontally (10-100s of kms), but are relatively shallow in depth usually (usually 500-2000 meters). Across coastal California, marine layer clouds are perceived as the largest uncertainty to utility resource adequacy operations. The project created a probabilistic model for predicting the likelihood of marine layer development at a specific location based on historical weather observations, satellite data, numeric weather prediction models, and environmental variables such as air temperature, humidity, fog formation, stratus and stratocumulus clouds, air pressure gradient; westerly winds as well as movement of frontal zones.

• Forecasting Net Load: Project provided short term operational forecasts integrated with client utility’s load forecast modelling resulting in significant advancement in net load forecasting providing enhanced visibility at the feeder level to the client and the associated system operator.

• Forecasting RAMP Events: The project demonstrated applications of radiometer field network and data processing techniques indicating immediate benefits of new advances in intra-hour solar resource and ramping events forecasting capabilities for the utility and associated system operator.