Previento - A Wind Power Prediction System with an Innovative Upscaling Algorithm

Previento is an operational forecast system which provides a prediction of the expected power output for a time horizon up to 48 hours. It is based on an physical approach with input from a large scale weather prediction model like Lokalmodell of the German Weather Service. In this paper we focus on the forecast of power output of regional distributed wind farms. Due to spatial smoothing effects the fluctuations of the combined power output of distributed wind farms are damped, which results in decrease of fluctuations of the regional power output compared to the forecast for single sites. These effects are already covered with the forecast of a small numbers of turbines. Therefore a detailed forecast for each turbine is not necessary and a linear upscaling from a small number of turbines is possible. As an example we make a forecast for whole Germany and show how this method works practicaly and which data is needed.