On the use of dual-doppler radar measurements for very short-term wind power forecasts

Abstract

Very short-term forecasts of wind power provide electricity market participants with extremely valuable information, especially in power systems with high penetration of wind energy. In very short-term horizons, statistical methods based on historical data are frequently used. This paper explores the use of dual-Doppler radar observations of wind speed and direction to derive five-minute ahead deterministic and probabilistic forecasts of wind power. An advection-based technique is introduced, which estimates the predictive densities of wind speed at the target wind turbine. In a case study, the proposed methodology is used to forecast the power generated by seven turbines in the North Sea with a temporal resolution of one minute. The radar-based forecast outperforms the persistence and climatology benchmarks in terms of overall forecasting skill. Results indicate that when a large spatial coverage of the inflow of the wind turbine is available, the proposed methodology is also able to generate reliable density forecasts. Future perspectives on the application of Doppler radar observations for very short-term wind power forecasting are discussed in this paper.