Wind Power Forecasting - Time Scales of Forecasts

Time Scales of Forecasts

Forecasting of the wind power generation may be considered at different time scales, depending on the intended application. From milliseconds up to a few minutes, forecasts can be used for the turbine active control. Such type of forecasts are usually referred to as very short-term forecasts. For the following 48–72 hours, forecasts are needed for the power system management or energy trading. They may serve for deciding on the use of conventional power plants (Unit commitment) and for the optimization of the scheduling of these plants (Economic dispatch). Bids for energy to be supplied on a day are usually required during the morning of the previous day. These forecasts are called short-term forecasts. For longer time scales (up to 5–7 days ahead), forecasts may be considered for planning the maintenance of wind farms, or conventional power plants or transmission lines. Maintenance of offshore wind farms may be particularly costly, so optimal planning of maintenance operations is of particular importance.

For the last two possibilities, the temporal resolution of wind power predictions ranges between 10 minutes and a few hours (depending on the forecast length). Improvements of wind power forecasting has focused on using more data as input to the models involved, and on providing uncertainty estimates along with the traditionally provided predictions.