Lars Bonnefoy has been awarded an FWO PhD fellowship for his project “From Clouds to Kilowatts: Multimodal Deep Learning for Probabilistic Solar Irradiance Nowcasting and Solar Power Forecasting”. With over 11 GW of solar capacity installed in Belgium, accurate forecasts for the next hours are increasingly important for grid stability. Lars will develop an open-source deep learning system combining satellite imagery, weather model output and ground measurements into probabilistic solar irradiance forecasts. The project is embedded in the Flanders Alliance for Climate Technology (FACT): together with the EVERGi group, the forecasts will be tested at the Smart Village Lab in Research Park Zellik. Lars is supervised by Prof. Lesley De Cruz (VUB-ETRO/RMI), with Prof. Thierry Coosemans (VUB-EVERGi) and Dr. Pierre de Buyl (RMI) as co-supervisors.

Congratulations, Lars!