Energy meteorology at MeteoSwiss: overview of some current activities

The energy strategy of Switzerland for the next 25 years contains a substantial increase of renewable energy sources in its electricity mix. By 2050, 36 TWh per year is planned to come from solar power (4 TWh today) and 4 TWh from wind power (approximately zero today). As for many other countries on similar pathways, this expansion of renewables will make electricity production and prices substantially more weather-dependent and hence volatile. It has thus become an important duty of Switzerland’s national weather service MeteoSwiss to provide the Swiss energy sector with high-quality weather and climate data and information for planning and operating such a future energy system. In this presentation, we provide an overview of some operational as well as currently developed weather and climate products at MeteoSwiss that are relevant for the energy industry. The first product, which has been operational since some years, seamlessly combines station observations, medium-range and subseasonal ECMWF forecasts, and statistical outlooks to monitor and predict heating degree days during the winter half-year on a local level as a widely used meteorological proxy for heating demand. The second product is an operational hourly satellite-based solar radiation climate dataset on a 2-km grid, which is based on EUMETSAT’s Climate Monitoring Satellite Application Facility (CM SAF) GeoSatClim algorithm with improved radiation in mountainous and potentially snow-covered terrain. This dataset will be crucial for planning the envisioned expansion of photovoltaic infrastructure and nowcasting its power production. The third product is a prototype of an hourly wind climate dataset on a 250-m grid, which is based on a new machine-learning algorithm that uses data from surface stations, numerical model simulations, and static topographic models as predictors. This prototype will improve the quality of gridded observational wind datasets particularly in mountainous terrain, which is essential for planning wind power infrastructure in Switzerland. All these products advance our endeavors in providing the energy sector and energy-targeting weather companies in Switzerland with a seamless operational monitoring, nowcasting, and forecasting suite of energy-relevant meteorological parameters.