Forecasting electricity production from renewable sources is challenging for producers, distribution and transmission System Operators, electricity traders, and other market participants. To a large extent, to maintain the power system's operational security, System Operators rely on the operational production forecasts of electricity producers. With the greater participation of renewable energy sources in total electricity production, the interest and importance of production forecast from these sources as accurately as possible, and the increasing reliance of the Operator system on the forecasts sent by the producers is growing. A particular challenge in the production forecast from renewable energy sources is the energy obtained from solar, wind, and small run-of-river hydropower plants. Given that with the growing participation of producers in the free market, this topic is becoming more and more relevant, different methods for production forecast and various accompanying software solutions are being reviewed, improved, and developed. Comparative analysis and selection and application of the appropriate method for evaluating forecast accuracy is the topic of this work. After introductory considerations on the importance of the adequate forecast for renewables production, ways for determining the precision of these solutions and the way to choose the appropriate criterion, i.e., the type of forecast errors for different types of renewable energy sources, is presented. Along with the mathematical formulation, a practical example of calculated different kinds of errors (standard deviation, bias, mean absolute error, mean square error, etc.) is given, together with their normalised percentage values. A description of the samples, flow, and results of calculations for measuring the success of production forecasts for solar, wind, and small hydropower plants is given. At the end of the paper, notes on possible and necessary improvements are briefly given, aimed at better production forecast and more comprehensive analysis of different types of forecast errors.
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