Benchmarking of different approaches to forecast solar irradiance

Ponencia presentada en: 24th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition celebrada del 21-25 de septiembre de 2009 en Hamburgo.Power generation from photovoltaic systems is highly variable due to its dependence on meteorological conditions. An efficient use of this fluctuating energy source requires reliable forecast information for management and operation strategies. Due to the strong increase of solar power generation the prediction of solar yields becomes more and more important. As a consequence, in the last years various research organisations and companies have developed different methods to forecast irradiance as a basis for respective power forecasts. For the end-users of these forecasts it is important that standardized methodology is used when presenting results on the accuracy of a prediction model in order to get a clear idea on the advantages of a specific approach. In this paper we introduce a benchmarking procedure to asses the accuracy of irradiance forecasts and compare different approaches of forecasting. The evaluation shows a strong dependence of the forecast accuracy on the climatic conditions. For Central European stations the relative rmse ranges from 40 % to 60 %, for Spanish stations relative rmse values are in the range of 20 % to 35 %

Development of a Tool to Analyze the Economic Viability of Energy Communities

Energy Communities (EC) are an instrument to improve the efficiency and autarky of Smart Grids by increasing the local consume of the energy locally produced. Energetic (energy flows, CO2 emissions) and economic (operative costs, acquisition and maintenance of technologies) aspects of all components of the EC must be evaluated to quantify the participation of the EC to achieve the proposed goal. Effective analysis of EC must account for numerous complexities and uncertainties, requiring advanced computational tools. The main contribution of this paper is the introduction of a software package to analyze the viability of ECs focused on the particularities imposed by the new Austrian law for renewable energies, which optimizes the energy flows between all participants. The results of the test case show more than a 14.2% reduction of global cost. At the same time, all participants achieve better results operating inside of the EC than alone. The range of cost reductions varies between 2.75% and 51%. The spread of these reductions opens a question about a fair and optimal way to set trade prices inside of the EC for future works

Health-status outcomes with invasive or conservative care in coronary disease

BACKGROUND In the ISCHEMIA trial, an invasive strategy with angiographic assessment and revascularization did not reduce clinical events among patients with stable ischemic heart disease and moderate or severe ischemia. A secondary objective of the trial was to assess angina-related health status among these patients. METHODS We assessed angina-related symptoms, function, and quality of life with the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) at randomization, at months 1.5, 3, and 6, and every 6 months thereafter in participants who had been randomly assigned to an invasive treatment strategy (2295 participants) or a conservative strategy (2322). Mixed-effects cumulative probability models within a Bayesian framework were used to estimate differences between the treatment groups. The primary outcome of this health-status analysis was the SAQ summary score (scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better health status). All analyses were performed in the overall population and according to baseline angina frequency. RESULTS At baseline, 35% of patients reported having no angina in the previous month. SAQ summary scores increased in both treatment groups, with increases at 3, 12, and 36 months that were 4.1 points (95% credible interval, 3.2 to 5.0), 4.2 points (95% credible interval, 3.3 to 5.1), and 2.9 points (95% credible interval, 2.2 to 3.7) higher with the invasive strategy than with the conservative strategy. Differences were larger among participants who had more frequent angina at baseline (8.5 vs. 0.1 points at 3 months and 5.3 vs. 1.2 points at 36 months among participants with daily or weekly angina as compared with no angina). CONCLUSIONS In the overall trial population with moderate or severe ischemia, which included 35% of participants without angina at baseline, patients randomly assigned to the invasive strategy had greater improvement in angina-related health status than those assigned to the conservative strategy. The modest mean differences favoring the invasive strategy in the overall group reflected minimal differences among asymptomatic patients and larger differences among patients who had had angina at baseline

Initial invasive or conservative strategy for stable coronary disease

BACKGROUND Among patients with stable coronary disease and moderate or severe ischemia, whether clinical outcomes are better in those who receive an invasive intervention plus medical therapy than in those who receive medical therapy alone is uncertain. METHODS We randomly assigned 5179 patients with moderate or severe ischemia to an initial invasive strategy (angiography and revascularization when feasible) and medical therapy or to an initial conservative strategy of medical therapy alone and angiography if medical therapy failed. The primary outcome was a composite of death from cardiovascular causes, myocardial infarction, or hospitalization for unstable angina, heart failure, or resuscitated cardiac arrest. A key secondary outcome was death from cardiovascular causes or myocardial infarction. RESULTS Over a median of 3.2 years, 318 primary outcome events occurred in the invasive-strategy group and 352 occurred in the conservative-strategy group. At 6 months, the cumulative event rate was 5.3% in the invasive-strategy group and 3.4% in the conservative-strategy group (difference, 1.9 percentage points; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.8 to 3.0); at 5 years, the cumulative event rate was 16.4% and 18.2%, respectively (difference, 121.8 percentage points; 95% CI, 124.7 to 1.0). Results were similar with respect to the key secondary outcome. The incidence of the primary outcome was sensitive to the definition of myocardial infarction; a secondary analysis yielded more procedural myocardial infarctions of uncertain clinical importance. There were 145 deaths in the invasive-strategy group and 144 deaths in the conservative-strategy group (hazard ratio, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.83 to 1.32). CONCLUSIONS Among patients with stable coronary disease and moderate or severe ischemia, we did not find evidence that an initial invasive strategy, as compared with an initial conservative strategy, reduced the risk of ischemic cardiovascular events or death from any cause over a median of 3.2 years. The trial findings were sensitive to the definition of myocardial infarction that was used