A Multiscale Wind and Power Forecast System for Wind Farms

A large scale introduction of wind energy in power sector causes a number of challenges for electricity market and wind farm operators who will have to deal with the variability and uncertainty in the wind power generation in their scheduling and trading decisions. Numerical wind power forecasting has been identified as an important tool to address the increasing variability and uncertainty and to more efficiently operate power systems with large wind power penetration. It has been observed that even when the wind magnitude and direction recorded at a wind mast are the same, the corresponding energy productions can vary significantly. In this work we try to introduce improvements by developing a more accurate wind forecast system for a complex terrain. The system has been operational for eight months for the Bessaker Wind Farm located in the middle part of Norway in a very complex terrain. Operational power curves have also been derived from data analysis. Although the methodology explained has been developed for an onshore wind farm, it can very well be utilized in an offshore context also. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).