Climate services R&I

According to the European Roadmap for Climate Services, the term climate services covers the transformation of climate-related data - together with other relevant information - into customised products such as projections, forecasts, information, trends, economic analysis, assessments, counselling on best practices and any other service in relation to climate that may be useful for society at large.

In this regard, S2S4E will provide further tailored information for decision-making in the wind and solar energy sectors, by generating seasonal forecasts of the capacity factor. The capacity factor is a widely used indicator that allows fair comparisons between wind farms and solar plants of different sizes. Over a period of time, it gives the percentage of generated energy with respect to the maximum achievable if the farm/plant were operating at full capacity all the time. In this sense, the capacity factor measures how good the atmospheric conditions have been for producing energy during a specific time period.

For hydropower, S2S4E will provide information about the amount of water stored as snow during winter, which gives a measure of the natural water storage and the hydropower production capacity. This information is of most interest for users in regions favourable for hydropower production.

In the project electricity demand is represented in terms of consumption rates.