Sky-to-power forecasting
See the dip.
Before the shade.
A cloud doesn't have to be a surprise.
Aheadlight turns the sky over your solar farm into the next 60 minutes of power.
50 MWac / 1,152 representative tables
Power, before it reaches the meter
Farm → Sky → Confidence → Value → Start
Start with a field.
Not a fleet of sensors.
One boundary, AC capacity, and a production feed. That's enough to find out what your next hour could look like.
We match satellite cloud motion to your site's layout, then calibrate the power model against your meter. Existing sky cameras add detail where fast, local cloud changes matter. You can begin without buying one.
A fit for utility solar, portfolios, and solar + storage. Best on contiguous sites from 5 to 200 MW. Rooftop fleets spread across a city need a portfolio assessment first.
Connect the sky ↓Move the sky.
Move the forecast.
The shadow you see and the megawatts you read come from the same cloud.
Aheadlight carries a cloud's motion, thickness, and uncertainty forward across your site. Each patch of shade changes the light hitting a panel. Those panel responses add up to the power at your meter.
Try a faster front.
Change the wind. The cloud arrives sooner, the dip shifts left, and your notice shrinks. Return to the field to see the exact same change overhead.
The live field uses a bounded cloud-transport model to make the relationship visible. Operational forecasts combine satellite refreshes, site telemetry, and optional sky images; cloud evolution adds uncertainty.
Check the confidence ↓A useful forecast knows
when to leave more room.
More warning. Never certainty.
Clouds form, split, and disappear. A low cloud bank over mountains is a harder problem than a stable front over flat land. We show an interval beside every expected value, and widen it when the inputs get old.
Missing meter data, inverter clipping, snow cover, and curtailment can all look like lost sunlight. We flag them separately. Your dispatcher decides what to do; Aheadlight does not control an inverter or make a market bid.
IncludedFeed health, ramp alerts, confidence bands, and every original forecast retained for audit.
Not includedDay-ahead bidding, camera hardware, power guarantees, or autonomous battery dispatch.
Fresh inputs are a good start. Your trial measures whether the forecast actually beats persistence at your site.
Inspect a real decision ↓The shade arrived.
The team was ready.
At a West Texas solar + storage site, a fast front gave the operations team a narrow window to prepare. Here's the sequence, including what the forecast missed.
Trial replay · 28 daylight days · 1-minute resolution
Compared against persistence using the same meter feed.
Ramp alert: 24 MW expected.
The next-hour forecast flagged a drop below 30 MW. The 80% interval ran from 20 to 29 MW. The operator prepared a battery schedule while the panels were still in full sun.
Measured trough: 24.8 MW.
The first dip arrived one minute later than forecast. Meter output landed 0.8 MW above the predicted trough. The shape mattered more than a single accuracy number.
Recover with the cloud edge.
The forecast showed recovery before the meter did. The operator stepped the battery back instead of waiting for the ramp to finish. Every action remained theirs.
“We don't need the sky to be predictable. We need enough time to make a decision.”Jamie Voss · Operations lead, Cedar Reach Energy
Across the trial: 3.6 MW mean absolute error at 30 minutes, versus 6.1 MW for persistence. Results depend on the site, weather, and data quality. We use your own baseline before discussing a rollout.
Work out the price ↓The next hour.
One clear bill.
$290 per site + $14 per MW, per month.
Capacity is the AC export rating, not panel nameplate capacity. Every seat and every forecast is included. Start with one site, prove the value, then add the rest of your portfolio.
- 1-minute forecasts through a 60-minute horizon
- Dashboard, API, webhooks, and ramp alerts
- Unlimited viewers and 12 months of forecast history
- Meter calibration and a named onboarding engineer
Camera purchase and installation are separate. Custom SCADA adapters are quoted before work begins. No fee for a failed forecast request. Cancel before renewal; export your history at any time.
Your selected 50 MW site is used throughout this plan. Change its capacity ↑
For a 50 MW site, the monthly service is equivalent to 19.8 MWh at $50/MWh. That's a cost comparison, not a promise of extra generation or trading returns.
Build my evaluation ↓Bring a field.
We'll bring foresight.
Your first forecast starts with the site you already run.
Prepare a boundary file, the AC export rating, and read-only access to a minute-level meter feed. We'll validate timestamps and data gaps together, agree on a baseline, then let the next two weeks of weather do the talking.
Your evaluation stays read-only. No plant controls change, no market instructions are sent, and the team can compare each forecast with what actually happened before committing.
Validate feedsDays 2–14
Run in parallelDay 14
Review the evidence
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