The impact of wind field spatial heterogeneity and variability on short-term wind power forecast errors

Wind power is associated with uncertainties in scheduling and dispatching to the power grid, because the availability of wind speed is unknown in advance, and precise wind power forecasts are crucial to reducing these uncertainties. However, the accuracy of the wind power prediction, which is driven by average wind speed forecasting, is influenced by the spatial variability of the wind field. In this paper, the mechanisms of how wind power prediction errors are caused by the spatial heterogeneity of wind speeds and wind turbine power curves are analyzed. The degree of spatial heterogeneity of wind farms and errors caused by this are defined, and the relationships between various errors are revealed. We choose wind data collected from one observation site in northeast China as a sample; the results indicate that the short-term wind power prediction error is mainly caused by the inhomogeneity of the power curves. Moreover, these forecast errors can vary with season and installed wind farm capacity.