A decision-making experiment under wind power forecast uncertainty

As the penetration levels of renewable energy sources increase and climatic changes produce more and more extreme weather conditions, the uncertainty of weather and power production forecasts can no longer be ignored for grid operation and electricity market bidding. In order to support the energy industry in the integration of uncertainty forecasts into their business practices, this work describes an experiment conducted with 105 participants from the energy industry. In the framework of an IEA Wind Task 36 workshop, the experiment aimed to investigate existing psychological barriers in the industry to adopt probabilistic forecasts and to better understand human decision processes. We designed and ran a 'decision game' to demonstrate the potential benefits of uncertainty forecasts in a realistic-although simplified-problem, where an energy trader had to decide whether to trade 100% or 50% of the energy of an offshore wind park on a given day based on deterministic and probabilistic uncertainty day-ahead forecasts. The focus thus was on a decision-making process dealing with extremes that can cause high costs in the form of security issues in the electric grid for system operators, or high monetary losses for traders, who have bid a power production into the market that failed to be produced due to high-speed shutdown of the wind turbines. This paper presents the obtained results, extracts behavioural conclusions and identifies how to overcome psychological barriers to the adoption of uncertainty forecasts in the energy industry.

Automated summary

As the penetration of renewable energy sources and the impact of climate change increase, it is crucial to address the uncertainty in weather and power production forecasts. This study conducted an experiment with participants from the energy industry to investigate the psychological barriers to adopting probabilistic forecasts and to find ways to overcome them.