AWS Public Sector Blog
Author: Nick Engerer
Dr. Nick Engerer is the Chief Technology Officer of Solcast, and an expert in the field of solar radiation modelling and forecasting. Dr. Engerer has co-founded Solcast out of a sincere desire to enable others to build the solar-powered future, where the team has deployed solar forecasting and historical data services worldwide, including utility scale and rooftop solar power forecasting, as well as free access for researchers. Follow him on twitter @nickengerer.
Solcast: Solar irradiance forecasting for the solar powered future
Solcast produces real-time, historical and forecast estimates of the available solar radiation resources around the globe. Altogether, this requires processing imagery from five geostationary weather satellites, which take snapshots of the Earth from space every 5-15 minutes. These images can be as fine as 1 kilometer in spatial resolution and are re-captured and transmitted as frequently as every five minutes – a large volume of data. A single third-generation weather satellite in orbit over the United States such as the GOES-16 generates nearly two terabytes (TB) of data each month.