Wind power forecasting
Wind farms, elegant looking mills, turning lackadaisically as the wind drives their enormous rotary blades, are the most visual aspect to a complex power management system. Grid connected wind farms in co-operation with meteorological resources need accurate management principles to better utilise the power they produce. Under the JOULE2 Programme, funded by the EC, a means to forecast weather patterns in order to predict the wind power production requirements has been developed. These methods and techniques were aimed at predicting within a 32-hour time frame, the meteorological conditions that would prevail both locally and regionally. The intention was to save on economic aspects as well as on the burning of fossil fuels where the traditional power generator systems were concerned. If wind power production was to pick up in the next 24 hours, a reduction in fossil fuel burners could be warranted without a loss of power supplies to the end users. These prediction methods are twice validated in context with regional data based on WAsP extrapolated information and a statistical analysis based on historical weather observations. Of interesting note, is that the WAsP programme is a user-friendly but powerful programme to predict wind power generation, along with pre-determining the best possible sites for wind-farms in accordance to several criteria such as the wind-atlas interpolator, a 3D terrain influence map and a roughness change model which accounts for terrain features such as surface roughness conditions. The project is currently being tested in two wind type conditions. In the Northern European countries in high-wind conditions and in certain Mediterranean areas in low-wind conditions. It is hoped that the data collected will make the European wind-generation industry a worldwide competitor as the predictions proved to be highly accurate with the capacity to predict severe storms as well.
