Weather and Climate Services in Support of the German Energy Transition: Use cases from Germany’s national meteorological service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD)

The energy sector has a wide range of requirements for weather and climate data and services. As in many other countries, the share of renewable energies has increased in Germany during the last years and the German government aims at a further increase within the next decades. As a consequence, there is an increasing need for meteorological information on several time scales. In this presentation, we will discuss the experience of Germany’s national meteorological service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD) with the provision of user-oriented services for various stakeholders in the energy sector.

DWD hosts several national and international climate data centres that provide observation-based climatological data suitable for assessments of the site-specific renewable energy potential, but also suitable for evaluating weather variability and the resulting risks of shortfall events or complementarity of energy resources (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2020.10.102). The datasets are derived from traditional weather observations, satellite data (e.g. https://www.cmsaf.eu) or model-based atmospheric reanalyses (e.g. https://doi.org/10.5194/asr-17-115-2020). Climate simulations can help to assess whether relevant changes in critical parameters are to be expected in the future. The debates in the recent winters about the risks of a shortage in gas availability have also led to an increased interest in seasonal forecasts.

Weather forecasts are of particular interest for the daily operation of the energy system, the predictive balancing of production and consumption, the management of congestion and the weather dependent thermal rating of the overhead lines in the electrical grid. In close contact with our key user groups, DWD optimizes and co-designs forecast products and services tailored to the user needs. One special focus lies on the co-development of products that make use of ensemble forecast information and to foster its integration in the user’s decision process.

DWD's open data policy (https://www.dwd.de/opendata) also supports the cooperation with this community. In addition to the national data, DWD’s international data centres also provide relevant datasets for Europe, or beyond (e.g. https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.815043).

In the presentation we will discuss the results and lessons learned of the cooperation with our users and we will also provide information on products that may be of interest to other users.