Solar forecasting is becoming increasingly important due to the exponential growth in total global solar capacity each year. More photovoltaic (PV) penetration in the grid poses problems for grid stability due to the inherent intermittent and variable nature of PV power production. Therefore, forecasting of solar quantities becomes increasingly important to grid operators and market participants. This review presents the most recent relevant studies focusing on short-term forecasting of solar irradiance and PV power production. Recent research has increasingly turned to machine learning to address this challenge. The paper provides a discussion about building a solar forecasting model, including evaluation measures and machine learning method selection through analysed literature. Given that machine learning is data-driven, the focus of this review has been placed on data sources referenced in the literature. Open-access data sources have been compiled and explored. The main contribution of this paper is the establishment of a benchmark for assessing the performance of solar forecasting models. This benchmark utilizes the mentioned open-source datasets, offering a standardized platform for future research. It serves the crucial purpose of streamlining investigations and facilitating direct comparisons among different forecasting methodologies in the field of solar forecasting.

One of the most serious obstacles to massive deployment of electric vehicles is insufficient and cumbersome charging infrastructure. Both the number of charging points and their power capacity are often insufficient. On top of that, this new technology often suffers from many issues related to insufficient testing, immaturity and irregular handling. This paper summarizes the issues with the electric vehicle charging infrastructure and describes first-hand experiences with long-range electric vehicle trips originating from Zagreb, Croatia, during 2022. Issues with the charging points locations, power and availability are assessed. Based on these experiences, the paper provides some thoughts on the possible directions of the further development of the electric vehicle charging infrastructure in Croatia.

The cost for covering active power losses makes a significant item in transmission system operators (TSO) annual budgets, and still it received limited attention in the existing literature. The focus of accurate power loss forecasting and procurement is of high increase during the past 2 years due to spikes in electricity prices, making the cost of covering the active power losses a dominant factor of TSO operational costs. This paper presents practical aspects of the highly accurate models for transmission loss forecast in the day ahead time frame for the Croatian transmission system. The contributions are two‐fold: 1) Practical insights into usable TSO data are provided, filling a critical research gap and a foundational literature review is established on transmission loss forecasting. 2) A novel method utilizing only electricity transit data as input which outperforms existing practices is presented. For this, several algorithms such as gradient boosted decision tree model (XGB), support vector regressors, multiple linear regression and fully connected feedforward artificial neural networks are developed, and implemented and validated on data obtained from the Croatian TSO. The results show that the XGB model outperforms current TSO model by 32% for 4 months of comparison and TSCNET's commercial solution by 25% during a year‐long testing period. The developed XGB model is also implemented as a software tool and put into everyday operation with the Croatian TSO.