Long-term offshore wind power prediction using spatiotemporal kriging: A case study in China’s Guangdong Province

Abstract

The predicted wind power in coastal waters is an important factor when planning and developing offshore wind farms. The stochastic wind field challenges the accuracy of these predictions. Using single-point wind measurements, most previous studies have focused on the prediction of short-term wind power, ranging from minutes to several days. Longer-term wind power predictions would better support decision-making related to offshore wind power balance management and reserve capacities. In addition, larger-scale wind power predictions, based on gridded wind field data, would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the spatiotemporal variations of wind energy resources. In this study, a spatiotemporal ordinary kriging model was developed to predict the offshore wind power density on a monthly basis using the cross-calibrated multiplatform gridded wind field data. The spatiotemporal variations of wind power density were directly quantified through the development of spatiotemporal variograms that integrated spatial and temporal distances. The proposed model achieved a notable performance with an overall R2 of 0.94 and a relative prediction error of 16.35% in the validation experiment of predicting the monthly wind power density from 2013 in the coastal waters of China’s Guangdong Province. Using this model, the spatial distributions of wind power density along Guangdong’s coastal waters at monthly, seasonal, and annual time-scales from 2013 were accurately predicted. The experiment results demonstrated the remarkable potential of the spatiotemporal ordinary kriging model to provide reliable long-term prediction for offshore wind energy resources.