Utilizing Climatological Analysis to Improve Forecasting of Offshore Wind Ramps

As states on the East Coast of the United States moved toward achieving their renewable energy generation goals, the installation of offshore wind power generating facilities becomes more likely, especially in light of the large available wind resource offshore. Efficient operation of wind power plants and effective integration of wind generation into the electrical grid relies in part on high fidelity forecasting of the winds. Recent studies have shown that the price of wind power can be reduced by improving wind power forecasting. Additional work has shown that numerical weather prediction models can make significant errors in forecasting wind ramps, particularly in the timing of the ramp and in the magnitude of the pre-ramp wind speed. This study extends the work of Veron et al. (2018) by investigating the cause of the model forecasting error of wind ramps for the Delaware and New Jersey wind energy areas. Offshore wind ramps will be simulated both using the Weather Research and Forecasting model forced with a unique satellite sea surface temperature composite that preserves cold coastal upwelling common in the region, and a mesoscale coupled ocean-atmosphere model. Synoptic typing is used to identify and characterize model prediction of wind speed relative to observations. Several case studies of poor model wind ramp prediction will be explored in detail to develop further insight into the source of the model errors. Where and when possible recent observations of the vertical wind shear in the marine atmosphere are used to evaluate model performance.