Improving weather forecasts for wind energy applications

Abstract

Weather forecasts play an important role in the energy industry particularly because of the impact\r of temperature on electrical demand. Power system operation requires that this variable and somewhat\r unpredictable demand be precisely met at all times and locations from available generation. As wind\r generation makes up a growing component of electricity supply around the world, it has become\r increasingly important to be able to provide useful forecasting for this highly variable and\r uncertain energy resource. Of particular interest are forecasts of weather events that rapidly\r change wind energy production from one or more wind farms. In this paper we describe work underway\r to improve the wind forecasts currently available from standard Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP)\r through a bias correction methodology. Our study has used the Australian Bureau of Meteorology\r MesoLAPS 5 km limited domain model over the Victoria/Tasmania region, providing forecasts for the\r Woolnorth wind farm, situated in Tasmania, Australia. The accuracy of these forecasts has been\r investigated, concentrating on the key wind speed ranges 5 ? 15 ms ?1 and around 25 ms ?1 . A bias\r correction methodology was applied to the NWP hourly forecasts to help account for systematic issues\r such as the NWP grid point not being at the exact location of the wind farm. An additional\r correction was applied for timing issues by using meteorological data from the wind farm. Results to\r date show a reduction in spread of forecast error for hour ahead forecasts by as much as half using\r this double correction methodology ? a combination of both bias correction and timing correction.