Minimise electricity costs and maximise sustainability – with prosumer and residual load forecasts from ifesca
Sustainable management, especially when it comes to energy consumption, is becoming increasingly important for companies of all sizes. One obvious option is to generate electricity for their own consumption – this is possible, for example, with a photovoltaic or wind power plant on the company’s own premises. However, the amount of electricity generated and own consumption are rarely identical. With innovative software solutions such as ifesca.ENERGY®, users can analyse their production and consumption and create reliable forecasts based on AI. These help to minimise the purchase of electricity from the public grid as far as possible. Save costs with our software and minimise co2 emissions at the same time.
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What is a prosumer?
„Prosumer” is a portmanteau of the words “producer” and “consumer”. In the context of the energy industry, the term describes a person or organisation that produces more electricity than it consumes and therefore primarily feeds it into the grid. This is done by utilising renewable energy sources such as solar energy or wind power. A typical example of an electricity prosumer would be a company or household that produces its own electricity with solar cells on the roof and thus fully covers its needs and can also supply electricity to the public grid.
The term prosumer is becoming increasingly important in the context of the energy transition. It stands for the increasing use of decentralised energy production at the place where consumption takes place.
Prosumer forecasts from ifesca
Photovoltaic systems help consumers to cover or at least reduce their electricity requirements and turn them into prosumers, as they now generate part of their consumption themselves. In order to make the best possible use of this photovoltaic system, reliable forecasts are needed that also take into account the self-generation part. To create prosumer forecasts, overlapping effects of human behaviour and meteorological variables must be taken into account. We therefore use a combined time series from the feed-in data of a PV system and a self-consumption load time series to predict the fed-in power minus self-consumption.
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What factors influence the forecast for prosumers?
Because human behaviour plays a major role in forecasting for prosumers, it is not only based on weather data, but also on recognised weekly cycles and special days as well as the typical annual cycle of a photovoltaic feed-in.
The feed-in depends on a prosumer’s consumption and therefore also on special days: Commercial prosumers often consume all the energy they generate themselves on weekdays. On weekends, public holidays and bridging days, however, there is no self-consumption and the energy is fed into the grid.
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What is the residual load?
A residual load refers to the remaining demand for electricity from a consumer that cannot be covered by its own production and therefore has to be drawn from the grid. A typical example is a household with a small balcony power plant, which covers part of the consumption during the day, but which acts as a pure consumer in the evening and at night at the latest.
Reliable residual load forecasts from ifesca
ifesca is your strong partner for innovative software for creating residual load forecasts. In order to create reliable forecasts of the residual load for prosumers with photovoltaic systems, our ifesca.ENERGY® software analyses the overlapping effects of human behaviour and meteorological variables in order to predict the power drawn after self-supply.
Weather data plays a role here, as do daily and weekly cycles and special days, as in many companies, for example, consumption falls at lunchtime or at weekends. The typical feed-in from a photovoltaic system over the course of the year is also included in the calculations.
ifesca – strong forecasts for prosumers and residual load
Rely on ifesca to optimise the energy balance in your company. We combine innovation in software development with in-depth experience in the field of energy management and energy analysis. With our modern software solutions, we help prosumers to operate as sustainably and cost-efficiently as possible and to minimise their residual load.
Contact us to find out more about our services in the field of prosumer and residual load forecasting. We are happy to advise you and look forward to your enquiry!