The Role of Wind Forecasting in Grid Operations & Reliability

Abstract

Abstract-Wind energy is increasingly viewed as a desirable energy source, but it must be integrated into power grids and electric utility systems that are understandably oriented around issues of power, capacity and reliability. It is important to know the actual impact costs of significant wind penetration levels, and the paper first describes a study approach and the results of a specific wind integration study in North America. Once the impact costs are understood, it is then possible to design tools and operating practices to minimize these impact costs. Wind forecasting tools are a critical element in minimizing the impact costs and ensuring reliability with larger amounts of wind energy on the grid, and the approaches and reasonable expectations for state-of-the-art wind forecasting methods are described. The value of wind energy is increased, and larger amounts of wind energy can be used, if it can be scheduled using wind forecasting methods.

New Approaches for Very Short-term Steady-State Analysis of An Electrical Distribution System with Wind Farms

“…Moreover, the GPM, NM, MM, and BM predictions generally have values lower than the ones obtained by PM. In particular, GPM predictions, as expected, were slightly variable during the 24-hour period due to the significant influence of the mean value of the last N measured powers in the application of relationship (2). All methods, except GPM, perform very well; only the results obtained with the GPM method were not strictly close to the real results.…”

“…Accurate methods for forecasting wind power are essential for the economical operation of power distribution systems [2]. Moreover, a comprehensive investigation of wind power integration into an electric power system requires a careful analysis that covers time intervals that theoretically can range from a few milliseconds to several years.…”

Wind power forecasting & prediction methods

“…If the model is rerun a few hours ahead on the same day the MAE range is typically 5% of the name plate capacity of the wind farm [28]. The Danish system operator has had similar results [29].…”

Thermal power plant cooperation with wind turbines

“…If the wind power plant is considered as a conventional power plant, it must have its power generation forecast. The accuracy of a wind power generation forecast is generally between 10% and 20%, while some errors in high wind might be as large as 35% or more [ 14,15 ]. High quality forecasting of the power output of wind turbines is required for improving the management of the balancing power from traditional power plants.…”