The Probability Distribution of Wind Power From a Dispersed Array of Wind Turbine Generators

Abstract

A method is presented for estimating the probability distribution of wind power from a dispersed array of wind turbine sites where the correlation between wind speeds at distinct sites is less than unity. The distribution is obtained from a model for the joint probability distribution of wind speeds. This is able to incorporate arbitrary inter-site correlations. It is shown that this joint distribution reduces in the single site case to a wind speed distribution closely approximating the widely used Weibull; the multiple site power distribution is also shown to fit adequately to data on wind speeds from four sites in Western Australia. Results presented in graphical and tabular form for a range of representative cases show that a significant reduction in the variability of total wind power output may result from dispersion of aerogenerator sites; a quantitative guide to the magnitude of these effects is also provided.