Probabilistic wind power forecasts: from aggregated approach to spatiotemporal models

Thesis

Wind power is one of the most promising renewable energy resources to replace conventional generation which carries high carbon footprints. Due to the abundance of wind and its relatively cheap installation costs, it is likely that wind power will become the most important energy resource in the near future. The successful development of wind power relies heavily on the ability to integrate wind power effciently into electricity grids. To optimize the value of wind power through careful power dispatches, techniques in forecasting the level of wind power and the associated variability are critical. Ideally, one would like to obtain reliable probability density forecasts for the wind power distributions. As wind is intermittent and wind turbines have non-linear power curves, this is a challenging task and many ongoing studies relate to the topic of wind power forecasting. For this reason, this thesis aims at contributing to the literature on wind power forecasting by constructing and analyzing various time series models and spatiotemporal models for wind power production. By exploring the key features of a portfolio of wind power data from Ireland and Denmark, we investigate different types of appropriate models. For instance, we develop anisotropic spatiotemporal correlation models to account for the propagation of weather fronts. We also develop twostage models to accommodate the probability masses that occur in wind power distributions due to chains of zeros. We apply the models to generate multi-step probability forecasts for both the individual and aggregated wind power using extensive data sets from Ireland and Denmark. From the evaluation of probability forecasts, valuable insights are obtained and deeper understanding of the strengths of various models could be applied to improve wind power forecasts in the future.

Authors: Lau, A

• Publication date: 2011
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Time series forecasting
• Subjects: Statistics (social sciences)