The Department of Energy is launching a prize competition to improve the accuracy and adaptability of net load forecasting for renewable power.
EPRI, a nonprofit organization focused on energy research, development and distribution, announced Tuesday that it will collaborate with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to manage the American-Made Net Load Forecasting Prize.
DOE Secretary Jennifer Granholm unveiled the competition, which is part of the agency’s efforts to make progress on integrating distributed energy resources into the U.S. grid infrastructure.
EPRI will lend its Solar Forecast Arbiter tool to help the participants develop their proprietary forecasting models using historical load data.
Eligible contestants are institutions, companies, and nonprofit organizations based in the U.S. The DOE will choose three winners and distribute a total of $600,000 in cash to three runners-up.
“Increasing the accuracy of net load predictions will not only enable [grid] reliability, but also allow for cost-efficient planning and the dispatch of energy generation and storage,” said Becca Jones-Albertus, director of the DOE Solar Energy Technologies Office.
The American-Made Net Load Forecasting Prize was announced at the DISTRIBUTECH 2023 conference held on Feb. 7 to 9 in San Diego.
