A Data-Driven Short-Term Forecasting Model for Offshore Wind Speed Prediction Based on Computational Intelligence

Wind speed forecasting is an important element for the further development of offshore wind turbines. Due to its importance, many researchers have proposed different models for wind speed forecasting that differ in terms of the time-horizon of the forecast, types and number of inputs, complexity, structure, and others. Wind speed series present high nonlinearity and volatilities, and thus an effective model should successfully deal with those features. An approach to deal with the nonlinearities and volatilities is to utilize a time series processing technique such as the wavelet transform. In the present paper, an ensemble data-driven short-term wind speed forecasting model is developed, tested and applied. The term ensemble refers to the combination of two different predictors that run in parallel and the prediction is obtained by the predictor that leads to the lowest error. The proposed model utilizes the wavelet transform and is compared with other models that have been presented in the related literature and outperforms their accuracy. The proposed forecasting model can be used effectively for 1 min and 10 min ahead horizon wind speed predictions.