leverage cloud-predicting ai
UK to Leverage Cloud-Predicting AI to Anticipate Solar Energy Supply
In general, solar energy is less intermittent than wind, owing to the predictability of daytime, nighttime, solar intensity and the angle of the sun relative to a location throughout the day. Clouds, however, throw a wrench into the works, chaotically disrupting the supply of solar energy to solar panels with little warning (large-scale climate and weather forecasting models are, broadly speaking, unable to resolve at the level of individual clouds). Complicating matters, energy operators, while aware of large-scale solar facilities, are often unaware of the exact geographic siting of solar panels on households or businesses. The combination of difficult-to-predict clouds and missing location information for many solar panels means that the operators don't know when clouds are covering those solar panels – and, as a result of that uncertainty, the grid requires a larger buffer of other energy sources to account for the difference.