Estimation of the Possible Power of a Wind Farm

Abstract

It seems possible to increase competitiveness of wind power plants by offering grid services (also called ancillary services) and enter the wind power plants into the ancillary market. One of the ancillary services is called reserve power, the differential capacity between the generated power and the available power in the farm. The total amount of energy that a wind farm can potentially generate is called possible power. It is very important for a wind farm owner to have a relatively accurate estimate of the possible power of the wind farm in order to be able to trade the reserve power. In this paper the possible power calculated based on the estimated effective wind speed of a down regulated wind farm (the industry standard) is compared against the calculated possible power based on the algorithm presented in the paper. The latter takes into account the effect of the wakes of down regulated turbines and therefore gives a more accurate measure of the possible power. It is shown that for an interval of wind speeds the difference between these two can increase the uncertainty in the estimate of the possible power of the down regulated wind farm.