Fractional weibull wind speed modeling for wind power production estimation

Abstract

This paper describes the method of the Fractional Weibull Distribution (FWD) for modeling wind speed distributions. The Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) method is used for estimating the parameters of the FWD, fitted to the wind data from a tall tower. Seasonal wind speed variations are considered in the modeling. Compared to the standard Weibull distribution estimates, the FWD estimates yield greater accuracy in wind power estimation. The discrete distributions of the probabilities of the FWDs are used for obtaining expected wind energy production, which shows a considerable reduction in errors by about tenfold. A simple Mean-Variance analysis of power production is performed for a wind farm that can have a mix of three different turbine models. The results indicate that the standard deviation of power production can be considerably reduced by choosing an appropriate mix of turbines.