A new climatology reference model to benchmark probabilistic solar forecasts

Probabilistic solar forecasting is becoming a major topic in the solar research community as it provides more information about the uncertainty of the forecast compared to deterministic forecasting. However, to facilitate the adoption of probabilistic forecasts within solar forecasting communities (industry and academic), the definition and the use of standardized best practices are a prerequisite. Among others, there is a need for benchmark models that are able to properly assess the performance of new probabilistic forecasting methods. In this work, we propose a new climatology benchmark model called CSD-CLIM (for Clear-Sky Dependent Climatology). This new reference model is evaluated against two other climatology benchmark models namely the naive climatology and a well-referenced model in the literature, the CH-PeEn (for Complete History Persistence Ensemble). The verification of compliance with a set of properties that a climatology benchmark model must follow demonstrates that the new CSD-CLIM model outperforms the naive climatology and that it can be a viable alternative to the CH-PeEn model. It is shown that the better performance of CSD-CLIM is due to a specific binning of the historical irradiance data based on the clear-sky irradiance values.

Automated summary

Probabilistic solar forecasting is a major topic in the solar research community offering more information about forecast uncertainty, standardized best practices and benchmark models are crucial for its adoption.