Development of a High-Resolution Wind Forecast System Based on the WRF Model and a Hybrid Kalman-Bayesian Filter

Regional microscale meteorological models have become a critical tool for wind farm production forecasting due to their capacity for resolving local flow dynamics. The high demand for reliable forecasting tools in the energy industry is the motivation for the development of an integrated system that combines the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) atmospheric model with an optimization obtained by the conjunction of a Kalman filter and a Bayesian model. This study focuses on the development and validation of this combined system in a very dense wind farm cluster located in Galicia (Northwest of Spain). A period of one year is simulated at 333 m horizontal resolution, with a daily operational forecasting set-up. The Kalman-Bayesian filter was tested both directly on wind speed and on the U-V (zonal and meridional) components for nowcasting periods from 10 min to 6 h periods, all of them with important applications in the wind industry. The results are quite promising, as the main statistical error indices are significantly improved in a 6 h forecasting horizon and even more in shorter horizon cases. The Mean Annual Error (MAE) for 1 h nowcasting horizon is 1.03 m/s for wind speed and 12.16 degrees for wind direction. Moreover, the successful utilization of the integrated system in test cases with different characteristics demonstrates the potential utility that this tool may have for a variety of applications in wind farm operations and energy markets.