Application of wind power prediction tools for power system operations

The wide use of wind energy in Germany results in a lot of new power system operation problems corresponding especially to the stochastic character of the wind speed and to the not controllable production of energy. The significant amount of installed wind power in the German power system (currently more than 17 GW) make the traditional scheduling of the power generation for the next day very unsure. Consequently the costs of the power system operation are high because of a large scale provision of spinning reserve power coming from the traditional power plants. The decisive rule in the decreasing of these costs plays the exactness of the wind energy transformation modelling process which starts with the forecast of wind speed. In Germany since more than ten years the knowledge how to solve this problem is available. Based on more than 100 representative wind farm power measurements all over Germany very exact models for the determination of the current and expected wind power are developed. The models are in operation at the control stations of the Transmission System Operators.