Energy 36 (2011) 2671e2685

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Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/energy

A new probabilistic method to estimate the long-term wind speed characteristics at a potential wind energy conversion site
Jos A. Carta a, *, Sergio Velzquez b
a b

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Campus de Tara s/n, 35017 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain Department of Electronics and Automatics Engineering, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Campus de Tara s/n, 35017 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 14 October 2010 Received in revised form 3 February 2011 Accepted 5 February 2011 Available online 11 March 2011 Keywords: Conditional distributions Measureecorrelateepredict method Wind speed Stratied cross-validation Root relative squared error Coefcient of determination

a b s t r a c t
This paper proposes the use of a new MeasureeCorrelateePredict (MCP) method to estimate the longterm wind speed characteristics at a potential wind energy conversion site. The proposed method uses the probability density function of the wind speed at a candidate site conditioned to the wind speed at a reference site. Contingency-type bivariate distributions with specied marginal distributions are used for this purpose. The proposed model was applied in this paper to wind speeds recorded at six weather stations located in the Canary Islands (Spain). The conclusion reached is that the method presented in this paper, in the majority of cases, provides better results than those obtained with other MCP methods used for purposes of comparison. The metrics employed in the analysis were the coefcient of determination (R2) and the root relative squared error (RRSE). The characteristics that were analysed were the capacity of the model to estimate the long-term wind speed probability distribution function, the longterm wind power density probability distribution function and the long-term wind turbine power output probability distribution function at the candidate site. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction As a consequence of the interannual variability of wind, the rst concern about a site where the installation of a wind power station is being considered lies with its long-term (many years) wind speed characteristics [1e4]. However, for many places often only shortterm wind data are available. To overcome this drawback various methods have been proposed in the scientic literature for estimation of the long-term wind speed characteristics at such sites [2e15]. These methods use simultaneous measurements of the wind speed at the site in question and at one [2e10] or several [11e15] nearby reference sites with a long history of wind data measurements. The methods that have been proposed use different types of functions to relate the long-term set of wind speeds with the shortterm set of data. The type of relationship is often linear [7,8], though probabilistic relationships have also been proposed [9,10,14]. This paper proposes the use of a new MeasureeCorrelateePredict (MCP) method to estimate the long-term wind speed characteristics at a potential wind energy conversion site. The proposed method uses the probability density function of the wind speed at a candidate site

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 34 928 45 96 71; fax: 34 928 45 14 84. E-mail address: jcarta@dim.ulpgc.es (J.A. Carta). 0360-5442/$ e see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.energy.2011.02.008

conditioned to the wind speed at a reference site. Contingency-type bivariate distributions with specied marginal distributions are used for this purpose [16,17]. The proposed model was applied in this paper to wind speeds recorded at six weather stations located in the Canary Islands (Spain). Three types of analysis were undertaken for the purpose of evaluating the capacity of the model to accurately represent the long-term wind characteristics: (a) an analysis of the degree of t of the cumulative distribution functions (cdf) for wind speed to the cumulative relative frequency histograms of hourly mean wind speeds recorded at six weather stations located in the Canarian Archipelago; (b) an analysis of the degree of t of the cdfs for wind power density to the cumulative relative frequency histograms of the cube of hourly mean wind speeds recorded at the same weather stations; (c) an analysis of the degree of t of the cdfs for wind turbine power output to the cumulative relative frequency histograms of the wind turbine power output. A commercial pitchregulated 900 kW rated power wind turbine was used for this third analysis [18]. Two metrics were used in the three analyses, namely the coefcient of determination R2 and the root relative squared error (RRSE). As part of the analysis of the model proposed in this paper, a comparison of these metrics with those obtained from other probabilistic and linear models referenced in the scientic literature, which also use a single reference station [8e10], was also

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Fig. 1. Location of the weather station used.

carried out. The variance ratio method (VRM) was chosen from the linear models as, in accordance with the conclusions of reference [8], of the four MCPs that were compared in that study only the Variance Ratio method appeared to give consistently reliable predictions of all of the metrics. From the few probabilistic methods that have been published in the scientic literature related to renewable energies one discrete type was chosen [9], which takes into account wind direction, and one continuous type [10]. 2. Methods used for comparison The Joint Probabilistic Approach [9], the Weibull Scale method [10] and the Variance Ratio method [8] were chosen to compare their results with those obtained using the alternative method proposed by the authors. 2.1. The joint probabilistic approach (JPA) The procedure used by Garca-Rojo [9] is based on calculation of the joint probability mass function pST cer vc ; dc ; vr ; dr of the speed (v) and direction (d) of the wind over the short-term (ST) at the candidate site (c) and the reference site (r). From the joint probability mass function of the short-term wind speed and direction and the probability mass function of the longterm wind speed and direction for the reference site, pLT r v; d, estimation was made of the probability mass function of the longterm (LT) wind speed and direction for the candidate site, pLT c v; d Eq. (1).

bins were 1 m/s. The Mathcad Software 2001i programme of MathSoft Engineering & Education, Inc [19] was used for application of this method. One of the features provided by this software was used in the programming of the short-term joint probability mass function to create nested matrices. That is, matrices whose elements are also matrices. The marginal wind probability mass function for the Nw bins can be obtained from Eq. (3),

pLT c vi

Nd X Nw X Nd LT 1X pST cer vi ; dj ; vk ; dz pr vk ; dz ; i 1.Nw NF j 1 z1 k1

(3)

2.2. The Weibull scale method (WSM) This empirical method is based on the hypothesis that the reference site and candidate site wind speeds follow a two parameter Weibull distribution, whose probability density function (pdf), W-pdf [20], is given by Eq. (4)

f v; a; b

a v b b

 a1

exp

 a ! v

(4)

In addition, the existence is considered of a linear relationship between the scale parameters (b) and the shape parameters (a) of the probability density functions of the candidate site and the reference site, Eq. (5)

pLT c

1 vi ; dj NF

Nw X

Nd X

k1 z1

pST cer

vi ; dj ; vk ; dz pLT r vk ; dz
1

(1)

lST lLT lST LT LT c lr ; c 0lc c LT ST lr lr lST r

(5)

where NF is a normalisation factor , Eq. (2)

NF

Nw X Nd X Nw X Nd X i1 j1 k1 z1

LT pST cer vi ; dj ; vk ; dz pr vk ; dz

In Eq. (5), l represents the scale or shape parameter which is being considered. The parameters of the Weibull distribution were estimated using the least-squares method [21]. The Mathcad Software 2001i

(2)

Table 1 Distances between the weather stations (in km). WS-1 WS-1 WS-2 WS-3 WS-4 WS-5 WS-6 0 61.1 208.6 307.7 438.5 407.8 WS-2 61.1 0 160.4 269.3 401.0 381.5 WS-3 208.6 160.4 0 116.9 246.2 244.7 WS-4 307.7 269.3 116.9 0 131.8 132.3 WS-5 438.5 401.0 246.2 131.8 0 89.3 WS-6 407.8 381.5 244.7 132.3 89.3 0

Nw and Nd are the wind speed and wind direction bins of the joint probability mass function. In this study twelve 30 direction bins were considered for the purpose of dening the wind direction at the candidate and reference sites. The widths of the wind speed

Probably due to an erratum, this factor is not included in reference [9].

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Fig. 2. Relative frequency histograms of the wind speed of the year 2008 for the six stations used. Each histogram also shows the two-component mixture Weibull-pdf and tted Weibull-pdf.

Table 2 Means, standard deviations (S.D.), kurtosis and skew of the wind speeds recorded at the different anemometer weather stations. Year 2008 WS-1 Mean (m s1) S.D (m s1) Kurt (e) Skew (e) 6.12 2.91 0.37 0.39 WS-2 6.23 2.46 0.40 0.01 WS-3 7.98 3.79 0.92 0.02 WS-4 6.01 3.08 0.45 0.42 WS-5 6.66 2.50 0.21 0.29 WS-6 5.47 2.74 0.96 0.80 Years 1999e2008 WS-1 5.83 3.02 0.13 0.38 WS-2 5.83 2.53 0.39 0.12 WS-3 7.14 3.73 0.86 0.06 WS-4 5.64 3.17 0.15 0.57 WS-5 5.97 2.89 0.46 0.21 WS-6 4.82 2.32 1.02 0.69

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Table 3 Linear correlation coefcients between the wind speeds of the different anemometer weather stations. Year 2008 WS-1 WS-1 WS-2 WS-3 WS-4 WS-5 WS-6 1.000 0.660 0.736 0.497 0.410 0.509 WS-2 0.660 1.000 0.671 0.491 0.488 0.501 WS-3 0.736 0.671 1.000 0.502 0.472 0.552 WS-4 0.497 0.491 0.502 1.000 0.248 0.319 WS-5 0.410 0.488 0.472 0.248 1.000 0.449 WS-6 0.509 0.501 0.552 0.319 0.449 1.000 Years 1999e2008 WS-1 1.000 0.649 0.663 0.489 0.430 0.485 WS-2 0.649 1.000 0.674 0.514 0.456 0.521 WS-3 0.663 0.674 1.000 0.492 0.469 0.566 WS-4 0.489 0.514 0.492 1.000 0.259 0.377 WS-5 0.430 0.456 0.469 0.259 1.000 0.480 WS-6 0.485 0.521 0.566 0.377 0.480 1.000

Fig. 3. Schematic representation of the methodology used to train and test the proposed model.

programme of MathSoft Engineering & Education, Inc [19] was used for application of this method. 2.3. The variance ratio method (VRM) The variance ratio method, proposed by Rogers et al. [8], predicts the long-term wind speed at the candidate site, vLT c , by means of the linear relationship given by Eq. (6)

In the method proposed in this paper, from the short-term wind speed conditional probability density function, Eq. (7), and the long-term wind speed probability density function for the reference site, frLT v, estimation is made of the long-term wind speed LT v, Eq. (8). probability density function for the candidate site, fc

LT fc vc

1 CNF

ZN
ST fc vc jvr frLT vr dvr 0

(8)

vLT c

vST c

 ST  !  ST  sc s vST c vLT r r sST sST r r

(6)

where CNF is a normalisation factor, Eq. (9)

ST ST ST where vST r ,vc , sr and sc are the short-term means and standard deviations of the reference and candidate site wind speeds. These parameters were calculated for the twelve 30 direction bins which were dened for the wind direction at the reference site. vLT r represents the observed long-term wind speeds at the reference site. If Eq. (6) provides negative wind speed values, then a null value is assigned to these speeds. The Mathcad Software 2001i programme of MathSoft Engineering & Education, Inc [19] was used for application of this method.

ZN ZN CNF
0 0 ST fc vc jvr frLT vr dvr dvc

(9)

There are various methods of constructing bivariate distributions from information regarding the form of the marginal distribution. This

3. Proposed method
ST and V ST be two random variables which represent the Let Vc r short-term wind speed at the candidate and reference sites, ST v ; v respectively. If the joint probability density function fcr c r exists and is known, then the conditional probability density ST , represented by f ST v jv , for function of the random variable Vc c r c ST , is dened by Eq. (7) [22]. a value vr of Vr

ST fcST vc jvr fcST r vc ; vr =fr vr

(7)

ST such that where frST vr is the probability density function of Vr frST vr > 0.

Fig. 4. Powerewind speed characteristic curve of the wind turbine used in the study.

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paper used the family of distributions introduced by Plackett [16,17], which are called contingency-type or simple c-type distributions. So, Eq. (7) can be expressed as shown in Eq. (10)

h ih i ST v S1 2jF ST v j 1 S1 2jFc c r r 1 ST ST fc vc jvr p fc vc j1 S2 2 S2

(10)

Table 4 Parameters of the two-component mixture Weibull probability density functions of the different weather stations. WS Year 2008 Years 1999e2008

a1 (e)
WS-1 WS-2 WS-3 WS-4 WS-5 WS-6 2.729005 3.034438 1.810713 2.597023 1.735932 9.822167

b1 (m/s)
3.745895 3.519389 5.7846 3.752469 5.765048 3.660911

a2 (e)
2.950677 3.828031 4.254421 3.358039 4.670338 2.092843

b2 (m/s)
7.947805 7.60603 11.267293 8.591042 7.957536 6.141108

u (e)
0.292472 0.209921 0.468408 0.417332 0.347225 0.0602

a1 (e)
1.827694 2.517273 1.588097 2.268574 1.41332 6.273016

b1 (m/s)
5.816552 3.256737 4.849404 3.43214 3.998037 3.154643

a2 (e)
4.929111 3.365667 3.841308 2.936784 3.137729 2.289994

b2 (m/s)
8.922942 7.263881 10.334497 8.265112 7.591305 5.452468

u ( e)
0.823541 0.227528 0.465121 0.429719 0.304605 0.066275

ZN ZN
where S1 is given by Eq. (11) and S2 is given by Eq. (12)

Evc vr
0 0

ST vc vr fcr vc ; vr dvc dvr ;

Evc

h i ST ST S1 1 Fc vc Fr vr j 1
ST ST vc Fr vr S2 S12 4jj 1Fc

(11) (12)

ZN
ST vc fc vc dvc ; Evr 0

ZN vr frST vr dvr
0

(14)

ST v and F ST v are the cumulative In the above equations Fc c r r distribution functions (cdf) of the wind speed at the candidate and ST v is the wind speed probability reference site, respectively. fc c density function (pdf) of the candidate site. j is the coefcient of

ZN ZN 2 ST 2 2 sc vc Evc fc vc dvc ; sr vr Evv 2 frST vr dvr 15

0 0

The coefcient of correlation of the sample b r can be calculated using the n sample values vc;i ; vr;i , through Eq. (16)

n b r " n Pn

Pn

i 1 vc;i vr;i

Pn

i 1 vc;i

Pn

! (16)

i 1 vr;i

2 i 1 vc;i

!2 #1 " 2 Pn Pn n i 1 v2 i 1 vc;i r;i

Pn

i 1 vr;i

!2 #1 2

association which has to be estimated.2 In this paper, to estimate j the values of the coefcient of correlation of the sample (namely the short-term observed wind speeds at the candidate and reference site) and the model were equated [16,17]. ST The coefcient of correlation of the short-term model, z , is given by Eq. (13).

In this paper Eq. (15) is equated with Eq. (16) and the Secant/ Mueller method [23] is used to nd j.3

3.1. Marginal distributions used and their estimation Various pdfs have been proposed in the scientic literature to represent the wind regimes at a site [21]. The most appropriate pdfs can be selected from this wide range of possibilities to represent ST v and f ST v. However, an analysis of the wind data recorded in fc r the Canary Islands showed that the distribution which best ts the

xST

Evc ; vr Evc Evr

sc sr

(13)

where the expected values, E, are given by Eq. (14) and the vari2 ances s2 c and sr by Eq. (15)

This bivariate distribution has only one parameter, in addition to the marginals.

3 First the secant method is applied. If this secant method fails to nd a root j, then the Mueller method is used. The Mueller method is a modied version of the secant method. This algorithm is implemented in the Mathcad Software 2001i programme of MathSoft Engineering & Education, Inc [19], which was used in this paper.

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Table 5 Coefcient of association j of the bivariate distributions. Year 2008. WS-1 WS-1 WS-2 WS-3 WS-4 WS-5 WS-6 e 11.0275 16.892751 5.265359 3.912902 5.69398 WS-2 11.0275 e 11.246719 5.265359 5.186045 5.743455 WS-3 16.892751 11.246719 e 5.346644 4.845632 6.82522 WS-4 5.265359 5.151877 5.346644 e 2.214407 2.805872 WS-5 3.912902 5.186045 4.845632 2.214407 e 4.680542 WS-6 5.69398 5.743455 6.82522 2.805872 4.680542 e

data was a two-component mixture Weibull probability density function (WW-pdf) [21,24,25]. The WW-pdf, which depends on 5 parameters a1 ; b1 ; a2 ; b2 > 0; 0 u 1, is given by Eq. (17)

&  a1 1  a1 !' a v v f v; a1 ; b1 ; a2 ; b2 ; u u 1 exp

b1 b1
&

1 u

a2 v b2 b2

a2 1

b1

exp

a2 !' (17)

b2

Fig. 5. RRSE metrics of the models used in estimation of the long-term wind speed distributions.

Fig. 6. R2 metrics of the models used in estimation of the long-term wind speed distributions.

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Fig. 7. RRSE metrics of the models used in estimation of the long-term wind power density distributions.

The cumulative distribution function (WW-cdf) is given by Eq. (18).

&  a1 !' & v 1 u 1 F v; a1 ; b1 ; a2 ; b2 ; u u 1 exp  exp v a2 !' (18)

b1

b2

The least-squares method was used to estimate the ve parameters on which the WW-pdf depends. The LevenbergeMarquardt algorithm [26] was used to solve the problem.4

b1 and b2 are scale parameters with the same units as the random variable and a1 and a2 are shape parameters.

4. Meteorological data used The meteorological data used in this paper (mean hourly wind speeds and directions) were recorded over the period 1999e2008 at six weather stations installed on six islands in the Canarian Archipelago (Spain) (Fig. 1). These data were provided by the State Meteorological Agency (Spanish initials: AEMET) of the Ministry of the Environment and Rural and Marine Environs of the Spanish Government. These weather stations are located at the public airports in the Canary Archipelago. The Spanish Meteorological Agency (Spanish initials: AEMET) issues certications related to past atmospheric weather data kept in the ofcial records. The existing distances between the various stations are shown in Table 1. The height above ground level of each of the stations is 10 m. Fig. 2 shows, for 2008, the relative frequency histograms of the

wind speed for each of the stations with bin widths of 1 m s1. Each histogram also shows the WW-pdf and the W-pdf. Table 2 shows the mean, standard deviation, coefcients of variation, kurtosis and skewness of the wind speed in the year 2008 and over the period 1999e2008 for all six analysed stations. Table 3 shows the linear correlation coefcients between the wind speeds of the different stations. These coefcients were obtained for the wind speed data of 2008 and for the period 1999e2008. If the data from Table 1 are compared with the corresponding data from Table 3, a fact can be observed that has previously been demonstrated in a number of references [4,27e29]. That is, it can be observed that the correlations between wind speeds recorded at different geographical sites decrease with the distance between them. However, it should also be added that this coefcient is inuenced by the orography of the areas where these stations are installed. With regard to the length of the period of time for which data are available in this study, it should be mentioned that, according to Hiester and Pennell [1], accurate estimation of the mean values of the wind performance at the candidate site is possible using 10 years of data. However, other authors [30,31] assume that twenty or thirty years of data are required to undertake long-term characterisation of a wind resource.

5. Methodology Fig. 3 shows a schematic diagram of the procedure that is commonly employed. It can be seen that there is a candidate site for which a short period of mean hourly wind data is available (in our case, for the year 2008) and a reference station for which mean hourly wind data are available for a long period of time (in our case, 10 years: 1999e2008). Using the model described above in Section 3, the objective was to estimate the wind speed characteristics at the candidate station for the unknown longterm period. For this purpose, models were trained and tested from the set of known data recorded for the year 2008 (this

4 The Mathcad Software 2001i programme of MathSoft Engineering & Education, Inc [19] is used to nd the values of the ve parameters.

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Fig. 8. R2 metrics of the models used in estimation of the long-term wind power density distributions.

stage is indicated by the circled number 1 in Fig. 3). The stratied k-fold cross-validation method [32,33] was used to train and test the model. This method is based on randomly partitioning the set of data available into similar-sized disjoint subsets. The model is trained with the data set comprising the union of k 1 subsets, while the remaining subset is used for testing purposes. This procedure is repeated k times, each time using a different subset to test and determine a partial error di. The overall error d is calculated as the arithmetic mean of the k errors, Eq. (19) [14].

The standard deviation Sd of the errors is given by Eq. (20)

v u k u 1 X 2 Sd t d d k 1 i1 i

(20)

If the hypothesis is considered that the errors are independent and distributed according to a normal law, then the error condence interval can be estimated through Students t test. That is, by applying the statistic indicated in Eq. (21)

k 1X d k i1 i

(19)

dm pwtk1 Sd = k

(21)

Fig. 9. RRSE metrics of the models used in estimation of the long-term distributions of the electrical power generated by a wind turbine.

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Fig. 10. R2 metrics of the models used in estimation of the long-term distributions of the electrical power generated by a wind turbine.

This statistic has a t distribution with k 1 degrees of freedom. So, the condence level for the mean error m will be given by Eq. (22). Where a is the level of signicance.

6.1. Wind speed In the case of the method proposed in this paper and of the WSM, an analysis is undertaken of the wind speed probability density functions generated by these methods. That is, for the proposed model Eq. (8) and for the WSM Eq. (4), with the parameters estimated through Eq. (5). In the case of the JPA, an analysis is undertaken for the wind speed probability mass function, Eq. (3). In the case of the VRM, an analysis is undertaken for the frequency histogram (Nw bins of width 1 m/s) constructed from the data estimated by that method.

v u k u X 1 2 P d ta=2;k1 t di d < m : kk 1 i1 v9 u k = u X 1 2 < d ta=2;k1 t di d 1a ; kk 1 i 1 8 <

(22)

In this study the standard criterion was used of taking k 10 [32,33] and a 0.05 (95% condence interval). It should be mentioned that the condence interval of the variability of the error obtained when estimating the wind turbine power output probability density function does not take into account the uncertainty of wind turbine generation. The known long-term data characteristics from the reference station were now fed into the model (this stage is indicated by the circled number 2 in Fig. 3) and the unknown long-term wind speed characteristics for the candidate station were estimated (this stage is indicated by the circled number 3 in Fig. 3). Using both the proposed and comparison models, estimation was carried out of the long-term wind characteristics for the six candidate stations. Following this, the estimated values were compared with the available or long-term observed values for these candidate stations. The characteristics analysed in this comparison are described in Section 6 and the metrics used in the evaluation described in Section 7.

6.2. Wind power density In the case of the proposed method and the WSM, the wind power density probability density functions are estimated through Eq. (23) [17],

WPDv

ZN
0

LT vv3 fc LT fc vv3 dv

(23)

where represents the long-term pdf estimated by the corresponding method. In the case of the JPA and the VRM, the wind power density probability mass functions are estimated through Eq. (24)

LT v fc

pmi m3 i WPDmi PNw 3 p m i mi i1

(24)

6. Wind characteristics analysed The analysed characteristics were the long-term statistical distributions of the wind speed, wind power density and wind turbine power output at the candidate site.

where the mi are the midpoints of the Nw bins and the p(mi) are the relative frequencies in each bin. In the case of the JPA, p(mi) is given by Eq. (3) and for the VRM by the relative frequency histogram of the wind speed as indicated in Section 6.1. In both Eqs. (23) and (24) air density is considered to be constant and independent of the wind speed [17].

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Fig. 11. Relative frequency histograms of the wind speed for the period 1999e2008 and for the six stations used. Each histogram also shows the long-term wind pdfs estimated using the proposed method with best and worst t to the observed data.

6.3. Electrical power In the case of the proposed method and the WSM, the wind turbine power output probability density functions are estimated through Eq. (25).5

EPDv

ZN
0

LT v PWTvfc LT PWTvfc vdv

(25)

where PWT(v) represents the power curve of a wind turbine. In the case of the JPA and the VRM, the wind turbine power output probability mass functions are estimated through Eq. (26).
5 The integral of Eq. (21) cannot be resolved analytically and numerical methods have to be used. In this paper we have used the Mathcad Software 2001i programme of MathSoft Engineering & Education, Inc [19].

PWTmi pmi EPDmi PNw i 1 PWTmi pmi

(26)

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Fig. 12. Relative frequency histograms of the wind power density for the period 1999e2008 and for the six stations used. Each histogram also shows, for the best ts of Fig. 11, the long-term wind power densities estimated using the proposed method and the Weibull Scale Method.

In both Eqs. (25) and (26) air density is considered to be constant and independent of the wind speed [17]. The power curve of a commercial pitch-regulated 900 kW rated power wind turbine [18] was used for the estimations in this section (Fig. 4). It should be mentioned that in this study the wind speed probability density functions and the wind speed probability mass functions used in Eqs. (25) and (26), respectively, are those estimated for the target station at a height of 10 m above ground level. This has been done so as not to introduce into this analysis the errors that are generated with models of extrapolation of wind speed with height. Normally, wind turbine manufacturers publish the power curves PWT(v) in table form in their catalogues. In this paper,

estimation of wind turbine power output for each pair of values of v was carried out through interpolation of the values of the table provided by the manufacturer. As the power curves are quite smooth they can be approximated by means of cubic spline interpolation [23]. 7. Evaluation metrics used The use of two metrics is proposed to evaluate the goodness-oft of each of the characteristics indicated in Section 6 to the observed data. These metrics are the coefcient of determination R2 [34] and the root relative squared error (RRSE) [33]. RRSE is dened by Eq. (27), where the subscript e indicates estimated and the

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Fig. 13. RRSE metric of the errors obtained in estimation of the wind speed distributions during the training and long-term estimation stages.

subscript o observed cumulative probability. R2 is the square of the coefcient of correlation obtained between the estimated and observed cumulative probability.

v uPNw 2 u 1 oi ei RRSE 100t PiNw % 2 i1 oi o

(27)

8. Analysis of results Table 4 shows the values of the parameters of the two-component mixture Weibull probability density functions tted to the short-term (2008) and long-term (1999e2008) data. Table 5 shows the values of the coefcients of association of the bivariate distributions obtained with the various weather station (WS) combinations. Figs. 5 and 6 show the RRSE and R2 metrics, respectively, generated by the different models analysed in the estimation of the long-term wind speed distributions. It can be observed in a notably high percentage of the cases analysed that the method proposed in this paper provided a better estimation of the wind speed distributions than the other methods which were used in the comparison. To be specic, these percentages were 96.7%, 83.3% and 93.3%

(in the case of R2) and 80%, 80% and 96.7% (in the case of RRSE), when the proposed method was compared with the JPA, WSM and VRM, respectively. Figs. 7 and 8 show the RRSE and R2 metrics, respectively, but in reference to estimation of the wind power density distributions. It can likewise be observed that, with the exception of the JPA, the proposed method provided better estimation of the wind power density probability distribution functions, in the majority of the cases analysed, than the other methods which were used in the comparison. The percentages of the cases in which the proposed method provided better estimation than the JPA, WSM and VRM, respectively, were 43.3%, 80% and 86.7% (in the case R2) and 50%, 76.7% and 90% (in the case of RRSE). Finally, Figs. 9 and 10 show the results of the two metrics obtained with all the models used in estimation of the power output distributions. As in the previous gures, in 46.7%, 80% and 86.7% (in the case of R2) and in 46.7%, 76.7% and 86.7% (in the case of RRSE) of cases, the proposed method provided better estimation of the distributions than the JPA, WSM and VRM, respectively. As can be observed in Figs. 7 and 8, the JPA is the only method which displays slightly better estimates of the wind power probability density function than the proposed method. Given that the higher the values of R2 are in the t of the wind probability distributions to the observed data, the lower are the

Fig. 14. RRSE metric of the errors obtained in estimation of the wind power density distributions during the training and long-term estimation stages.

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Fig. 15. RRSE metric of the errors obtained in estimation of the wind turbine power output distributions during the training and long-term estimation stages.

errors which are produced in estimation of the power output of a wind turbine [35], the authors of this paper are working on a more complete model that takes into account the inuence of the wind direction in long-term estimation. Development of this model is based on previous studies undertaken on modelling of wind direction [36] and a joint probability density function of wind speed and direction [37]. That is, the intention is to construct a trivariate copula (the three variables being the candidate and reference station wind speed and the reference station wind direction). Fig. 11 shows, for the period 1999e2008, the relative frequency histograms of the wind speed for each of the stations, with bin widths of 1 m s1. Each histogram also shows the long-term wind pdfs estimated with the proposed method which provided the best and worst ts to the observed data. Fig. 12 shows, for the same period of time, the relative frequency histograms of the wind power density for each of the stations, with bin widths of 1 m s1. Each graph in Fig. 12 also shows, for the best ts represented in Fig. 11, the long-term wind power density

Fig. 16. R2 metric obtained in the estimation of the long-term wind speed frequency histograms of the six stations, as a function of the R2 metric obtained in the rst stage of evaluation of the models.

probability density functions estimated using the proposed method and the Weibull Scale method. It can be seen that the better t in most cases comes from the proposed method as opposed to the other probabilistic method of continuous distribution as published in the scientic literature. With respect to the proposed method, it should be mentioned that the worst ts to both the wind speed and wind power density relative frequency histograms occurred in the stations WS-5 and WS-6. The reason for the poor quality of the t may be that the interannual variability of the wind characteristics has meant that the year 2008 wind data, used to design and train the model, are not representative of the long-term wind behaviour. If the data of Table 2 and the shape of the pdfs in Figs. 2 and 11 are examined, this becomes particularly clear in the case of WS-5. Signicant changes can be observed in the table in the coefcients of variation, kurtosis and skewness between the year 2008 and the long-term period. Figs. 13e15 show the RRSE metrics obtained in the training stage (see number 1 in Fig. 3), which were evaluated using stratied 10fold cross-validation. In this way, the result captures the mean of the 10 independent test subsets. Likewise, using the advantage of cross-validation, which enables estimation of the variability of the error during the training, Figs. 13e15 show the condence intervals of the metrics, with a signicance level of 5%. It should be mentioned that these intervals were determined on the hypothesis that the data are independent and follow a normal distribution. However, though the ten test subsets are independent, the same thing does not happen with the training subsets. The training subsets overlap in such a way that each two subsets share 80% of the data. This could affect uncertainty of the variability of the error obtained during the training period [38]. Also shown in Figs. 13e15 are the RRSE metrics obtained in the estimation stage (see number 2 in Fig. 3). It can be observed that the proposed models display a certain power of generalization, since the RRSEs obtained in the training stage do not differ excessively from those obtained in the estimation stage. In fact, on many occasions the error obtained during the estimation was lower than that produced during the training. It can be seen in Fig. 13 that, if the WS-5 estimates are discarded, in 68% of the remaining cases the long-term estimated RRSE are found within the condence interval obtained in the training stage or beneath its lower boundary. The cause of the largest discrepancies between the errors of the training stage and the estimation stage of the WS-5 is fundamentally the previously mentioned limited representation that the data used for model training have of

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Fig. 17. RRSE metric of the errors obtained in estimation of the wind speed distributions during the training stage, during the long-term estimation stage and when using the wind speed pdfs of 2008 as being representative of the long-term.

the long-term wind regime. Fig. 16 shows a comparison of the R2 obtained in the training stage with those obtained in the estimation stage. It can be seen that the models obtained also display in this metric a certain power of generalization. The errors obtained in the training and long-term estimation stages are, generally speaking, very similar. The largest discrepancies again appeared when estimating the long-term characteristics of WS-5 and WS-6. The degree of accuracy of the estimation of the long-term wind characteristics is related to the degree of correlation existing between the candidate and reference stations [16]. It should be mentioned that the coefcients of linear correlation which exist between the various stations (Table 3) are low or very low due to the distances between them (Table 1) and the orographic characteristics of the areas where they are installed. Consequently, it was not possible to analyse the inuence that high values of these coefcients might have on long-term estimation error. Likewise, it was not possible to undertake an analysis of the inuence of high values of the coefcient of correlation when comparing the proposed method with the other methods selected in this paper. It was noted from the tests carried out in this paper on the stations available that in some cases the MCP techniques may not be appropriate for estimating long-term wind characteristics. That is, the observed wind speed data over one year at the candidate site may provide better results than long-term estimations made with these techniques. Fig. 17 shows a comparison between the RRSE obtained in the estimation of the long-term wind speed distributions when using the method proposed in this paper and when the 2008 data are considered as being representative of long-term data. It can be seen that in all the cases analysed, with the exception of WS-1, when the short-term (2008) data are taken as being representative of the long-term, larger errors were produced than when the log-term wind speed pdfs were estimated using the method proposed in this paper. So, before applying this method, it would be advisable to perform a higher number of tests in regions with other wind regimes. Performing tests with stations with higher levels of correlation between their wind speed data series would probably provide information that could help in deciding whether to use this estimation technique. The most commonly used MCP methods for estimation of longterm wind characteristics can only use a single reference station.

With respect to these methods, the method proposed in this paper has provided better estimations of the wind speed distributions in the majority of the cases analysed. However, studies undertaken by the authors of this paper [16] show that if information from various reference stations is available and if appropriate methods are employed [15,16], then better estimations can be obtained for the long-term wind characteristics of the reference station. It should be mentioned that application of the proposed method for estimation of the wind speed of a site using multiple reference stations requires the construction of multivariate copulas. However, as stated in reference [39], the construction of n-copulas presents a number of inherent difculties. 9. Conclusions As a result of the application of the model proposed in this paper to the data for wind speed at several weather stations in the Canarian Archipelago, the following conclusion is reached: the proposed model provided better estimation of the wind speed distributions, in most of the cases analysed, than the other methods used in the comparison. The algorithm for the estimation of the long-term wind climate at a meteorological mast using a joint probabilistic approach as proposed in the scientic literature [9] is the only method which displays slightly better estimates of the wind power density distribution than the proposed method. Like all MCP methods, the proposed method is vulnerable to climate change [40], to the limited dependence between the reference and candidate site data and to the limited representation of the long-term wind characteristics for the data period used for training purposes.

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