The International Energy Agency's (IEA) projects that global renewable electricity generation will reach nearly 90% by 2030, reaching over 17,000 TWh and that this decade will see renewables achieve several key milestones: overtaking coal in 2025, surpassing nuclear (both wind and solar) in 2026, and solar PV becoming the dominant renewable source by 2029, followed by wind in 2030 as both eclipse hydropower. In order to keep the lights on, integration of renewables into system operation and power market trading experience new challenges, similar to those at the outset of the journey into renewable power generation. One tool for dealing with the weather-driven energy sources are forecasting.

In order to meet the challenges in the continuously changing landscape of renewable generation, several IEA task force groups have been built. Two dedicated tasks deal with forecasting:

PVPS Task 16 aims to facilitate the integration of photovoltaic (PV) systems into energy grids by reducing costs and uncertainties related to solar resource assessment and forecasting.

Task 51, under the IEA Implementing Agreement for Co-operation in the Research, Development, and Deployment of Wind Energy Systems (IEA Wind) focuses on improving the value of renewable energy forecasts.

The challenges are large, but with a common understanding of forecasting and evaluation principles, exchange and definition of the requirements on data and instrumentation and rules and procedures on quality control, the electric grid can be efficiently and safely operated. An international community can provide objective information and bring together stakeholders and developers to shape standards that enhance the comparability and enable accessibility of methods on a global level.

PVPS Task 16 and IEA Wind Task 51 have established collaborative work related to the further development of forecasting tools, value of forecasting on different horizons from minute-scale to seasonal forecasting, as well as instrumentation and quality control for forecasting purposes. The collaboration is necessary in a world, where power generation from Wind and PV are the two driving factors in the system operation of most countries.

An inspirational talk will be used as start-up into an interactive session, where the challenges of renewable energy forecasting with a penetration level of 80% or more renewables in the grid are the focus point around the questions to the stakeholders in the audience and later on from the panellists.