News & Innovation Powertage 2022

More accurate photovoltaic forecasts

The higher the percentage of solar power, the more important it is to have a high quality production forecast. Meteotest provides a simple interface to accurate irradiation and production forecasts for Switzerland and worldwide.

Solar power production is also gathering momentum in Switzerland. In 2021, it contributed 5% of annual electricity production - but at individual points in time, solar power already accounted for 30% of production.

Meteotest offers two different products for forecasting irradiation and production, respectively: 

  1. SolarForecast is based on weather forecast models and is suitable for forecast horizons between 4 and 120 hours.
  2. CloudMove is based on current satellite images and is suitable for high-resolution forecasts of the next 6 hours.

From autumn 2021, an additional tool is available for the satellite data-based service - the CloudMove Booster. It improves forecasts by a further 10-20% if radiation or production data of the customer's PV systems are fed in online.

The forecast services are easily accessible as an API and can be retrieved automatically. The forecasts are updated every 15 minutes and are available worldwide.

Further information and the API documentation can be found at solarwebservices.com. Access to the basic version including 10 sites is available from CHF 600 per year. The services can be used for monitoring as well as forecasting of PV plants.