Vermont Electric Power’s unique weather analytics tool improves wind, solar forecasting

The Vermont Electric Power Co. (VELCO) is utilizing an innovative weather analytics system that boasts what it calls the most precise and accurate wind and solar generation forecasts in the world.

“We are not aware of any other utility that has currently linked weather forecast information to wind and solar generation forecasts,” Kerrick Johnson, vice president for strategy and communication at VELCO, told Daily Energy Insider in a recent interview.

VELCO partnered with other state utilities and IBM Research to create the Vermont Weather Analytics Center in 2014. The center delivers weather forecasts up to 72 hours ahead of time and is precise to one kilometer, and it links that data to customer demand data from smart meters and to solar and wind generation forecasts, Johnson said.

This combination of precise weather forecasting data has improved energy grid reliability, allowed for better integration of renewable energy resources and reduced operational costs related to weather events.

Thanks to its state-of-the-art weather analytics center, the Rutland, Vermont-based VELCO was nominated as a finalist for this year’s Edison Award. The award is presented each year by the Edison Electric Institute, an association that represents U.S. investor-owned electric companies.

VELCO was nominated for the award along with the Vermont-based Green Mountain Power. Ultimately, neither company won the award for 2016, but no Vermont-based company had ever been nominated for it before.

The weather analytics project was developed amid documented evidence of a change in weather patterns, growth in renewable energy and the challenge of integrating renewables into the grid.

“Storms were becoming more frequent and more severe, thus more expensive,” Johnson said. “Second, we were seeing an explosion of renewable distributed generation all over the state at levels no one predicted.”

VELCO’s weather analytics data helps utilities better protect communities from the disruption of weather-driven power outages, and having accurate information on the specific locations and risks posed by storms also cuts service restoration costs, VELCO said.

In terms of renewable generation, Vermont’s grid utilizes approximately 200 megawatts of wind and solar resources, and more megawatts are expected to come online annually in the next several years, VELCO said. That makes weather analytics all the more critical, because they are used to help electric system operators predict the future output of weather-dependent resources, and also provides installed capacity and real-time production information.

VELCO said that it has achieved unprecedented levels of load and renewables forecasting accuracy. Accuracy levels for solar are 95.1 percent at 0–24 hours ahead and 94.7 percent at 0–48 hours ahead; while wind accuracy is 92.8 percent at 0–24 hours ahead and 91.3 percent at 0–48 hours ahead.

The technology has also resulted in operational cost savings for VELCO. Being able to count on when a solar panel or wind turbine is going to generate a certain amount of power means that the utility company does not have to buy other sources of power to back that up, Johnson said.

“Our individual owners and we as a transmission company are already seeing value,” Johnson said, adding that potential cost savings are still being studied.