What we do

We provide short-term forecasts, climate predictions and long-term climate projections to interested stakeholders (e.g. renewable energy project developers or plant operators), policymakers and investors in the renewable energy sector. We mainly work with wind and solar energy users, providing forecasts relevant to energy production by wind farms and photovoltaic panels.

Our predictions are based on cutting-edge climate modelling and provide the most robust climate information currently available worldwide. The provided information allows users to make informed decisions, helping them save time, money and other resources.

For example, we provide tailored mineral dust forecasts and climate services to the solar energy sector to help improve solar resource assessment and plant operation, especially in arid regions where airborne dust emissions affect the efficiency of photovoltaic panels and reduce the solar radiation reaching the panels.

More specifically, we provide the following products and services:

• Short-term forecasts are typically associated with the operational phase of wind farms and photovoltaic panels. They can be helpful in operation and maintenance planning, power system management by transmission system operators (e.g. scheduling, reserves planning, congestion management), better management of infrastructure (e.g. identifying the need for solar panel clean-up), predicting power ramp events and trading in the energy market, among other applications.
• Sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasts help predict climate phenomena that have not occurred in the past and cannot be predicted using a climatology-based approach, such as climate extremes. Some of these forecasts' applications include planning mid-term operations and maintenance, ensuring the balance between supply and demand, maximising the grid integration of renewables, anticipating the cash flow, energy trading and setting the electricity prices.
• Decadal predictions are particularly useful in the pre-construction phase of renewable energy plants, helping to understand and quantify the available resources in the future and potential economic risks. Some possible applications of these predictions include supporting decisions about reserve energy sources, anticipating long-term cash flow and portfolio modelling.
• Climate projections provide the energy sector with important information about the response of renewable resources to climate change, covering timeframes from decades to centuries ahead. These can be useful during the prospecting phase of renewable energy plant development, for example, for selecting the appropriate sites or designing transmission lines.