IEA wind recommended practice for the implementation of renewable forecasting solutions: hands-on examples for the use of the guideline

For any industry, it is important to establish standards and recommended best practices in order to ensure security of supply with a healthy competition structure. The IEAWind Recommended Practice for the Implementation of Renewable Energy Forecasting Solutions (IEA-RP) have been developed by a team of internationally active experts in wind and solar forecasting to fill this gap in the selection and implementation of optimal renewable energy forecasting solutions. The IEA-RP comprises four parts. The first part, Forecast Solution Selection Process, addresses the design of a customised process to select an optimal forecast solution for users specific situations. The second part, Design and Execution of Benchmarks and Trials, addresses the design, execution and analysis of customised forecasting benchmarks and trials. The third part, Forecast Solution Evaluation, describes methods and guidelines for meaningful evaluation of renewable energy forecasts and entire forecast solutions. The fourth part, Meteorological and Power Data Requirements for real-time Forecasting Applications, is a guideline for the selection, deployment and maintenance of meteorological sensors, power measurements and associated data quality control relevant to real-time forecasting. To assist in the practical application of the guideline, we provide three hands-on examples on how to use the guideline to design or improve forecast evaluation (Part 3) and measurement data quality (Part 4) in an efficient and impactful way. In the three use cases we demonstrate (1) evaluation of meteorological parameter forecasts (that could be used as input to a power prediction procedure) at a Danish coastal location, (2) verification of wind power predictions for a substation in the Northwest of Ireland and (3) quality control of meteorological measurements at an offshore location in the North Sea.