Wind farm power prediction: a data‐mining approach

Abstract In this paper, models for short‐ and long‐term prediction of wind farm power are discussed. The models are built using weather forecasting data generated at different time scales and horizons. The maximum forecast length of the short‐term prediction model is 12 h, and the maximum forecast length of the long‐term prediction model is 84 h. The wind farm power prediction models are built with five different data mining algorithms. The accuracy of the generated models is analysed. The model generated by a neural network outperforms all other models for both short‐ and long‐term prediction. Two basic prediction methods are presented: the direct prediction model, whereby the power prediction is generated directly from the weather forecasting data, and the integrated prediction model, whereby the prediction of wind speed is generated with the weather data, and then the power is generated with the predicted wind speed. The direct prediction model offers better prediction performance than the integrated prediction model. The main source of the prediction error appears to be contributed by the weather forecasting data. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.