Improved ICON-EU model may affect forecast quality

On 23 November 2022, the Deutsche Wetterdienst (German Weather Service, DWD) has implemented an improved version of its ICON-EU model which is part of our forecast ensembles for assets in Europe. The benefit of the improved model is its higher horizontal and vertical resolution – if you would like more details, please refer to the respective DWD announcement.

As a result, all wind assets in the affected region will now be subject to a transition phase of about three months. During this time, our system collects weather model and generation data in order to re-train the affected asset models. Until then, it might be necessary to reduce the weight of the ICON-EU model in the respective ensembles. Depending on the local weighting compared to the other weather models in use, this can have some impact on quality.

For solar assets, such a transition period will likely not be needed, as the parameters used here are less sensitive regarding the change in resolution.

Once this work is complete, we expect that the higher resolution of the revised ICON-EU model will lead to an improvement of the forecast quality for the affected assets; so this will be a net benefit.

Should you have any questions or if you feel that you observe changes in your forecast quality, please don’t hesitate to contact us.