Renewable Energy Systems is a huge growing market in Europe and also worldwide. Especially in Spain, the Market for Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is strongly emerging and the legislation allows the CSP producers to participate on the electricity market (OMEL). The precondition for the participation on the OMEL is the possibility to forecast the power production.
This paper shows the requirements for a production forecast system for a Solar Thermal Power Plant (STPP) on the example of the Parabolic Trough Power Plant Andasol 3. Besides the requirements for the system, the paper shows and evaluates the required meteorological input parameters and different approaches to forecast especially direct solar radiation. It includes also a financial analysis of the opportunities of the different feed in tariffs.