Estimating photo-voltaic power supply without smart metering infrastructure

Abstract

Due to the lack of appropriate grid communication infrastructure, many energy providers can only measure a very limited subset of their PV plants and therefore have only limited knowledge of the power flow inside their grid. Existing approaches to estimate the total amount of PV energy produced at present time ("nowcasting") require external data such as sun radiation or temperature that are often not available on-line. Using approximate computational algebra, we construct polynomial models to derive grid-specific formulae estimating the PV power provisioning without the need of additional data. We evaluate our approach based on real data from a German energy provider and demonstrate the accuracy of the derived models. Besides nowcasting, two additional application scenarios, snapshot provisioning and simulation of power flow, are discussed. © 2014 Springer-Verlag.