The electric power industry is likely to be the most weather
sensitive sector in the world modern industry. Insurance against the risk of loss
caused by natural fluctuations in weather condition has become a usual practice
at the end of the last century.
Nowadays, due to the planet’s growing population the question of regulation
of power consumption is started to increase its significance.
Weather risk insurance contributes to the steady economic
situation while energy saving and control of power consumption provide cost
saving and slow down the wasting of energy resources that all in all help to
reduce the negative impact on the ecology of the planet.
One of the modern approaches to the issue of energy saving is
automatic management of station load which is based on current and expected
levels of consumption which in its turn is closely connected with climatic and
weather factors.
Combined heat and power plants, fossil-fuel power plants and other types of thermal power stations operate in
accordance with current or temporary levels of power consumption and consider temperature
and wind conditions of air masses. Hydropower plants totally depend on hydrological
regime of rivers.
In the case of solar power plants energy flux density is contingent
on intensity of solar radiation and as a result it is determined by a season, a
part of a day and weather conditions.Wind farms directly depend on direction,
speed and power of wind. Here is also a crucial issue of strong geographical irregularity
of distribution of wind energy.
At the moment exactly the wind energy sector is a good example of
a sphere where automatic management of load and generation of electric power is
realized basing on accurate weather forecast.
For instance, Xcel Energy company implemented a such project in
October, 2011 and set a world record of the amount of energy generated from
wind power.
"Our goal was to enable automatic management of load and
generation [called “automatic dispatch], so our system could be smart about
turning units on, or keeping them offline when using them would be inefficient
or unnecessary. It’s enabled by an Its IT infrastructure that sends thousands
of data points every five minutes in order to connect the system to real-time
circumstances. The resulting cost savings were (and are) passed on to its
customers, to date yielding approximately $60 million in savings for a company
investment of $3.8 million. ”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2016/06/30/xcel-tames-variability-of-wind-power/#43f16be42716