Wind Energy Forecasting: The Economic Benefits of Accuracy

摘要

Despite the many desirable attributes of wind energy, the fact that wind is an intermittent resource has been a source of concern for utility system operators and managers. State-of-the-art wind power production forecast systems have demonstrated that they can significantly enhance the value of wind generation by increasing system reliability and reducing operating costs. The best forecasts are made with a sophisticated multi-component forecast system such as AWS Truewind's eWind system, which is composed of both physics-based and statistical models that take advantage of a wide range of local and regional meteorological and power production data. Such systems typically yield a mean absolute error for hourly power production forecasts of about 2% to 5% of installed capacity for a one-hour-ahead forecast, about 9% to 14% for a 4-hour ahead prediction, and about 13% to 19% for a day-ahead forecast. A study by GE Energy estimated that this level of forecast performance, if applied to 3,300 MW of wind generation in New York State, would reduce utility system operating costs by about $125 million per year compared to no forecasts. The study also indicated that the current level of forecast performance would attain 80% of the cost reduction that could be achieved with a perfect wind forecast.