Helimax at Windpower 2008 in Houston:

Houston/Hamburg, 4 June 2008 - The use of wind energy continues to expand. Utilities and grid system operators are preparing to integrate more of this renewable electricity source. As the output from wind farms varies with the wind regime, certain challenges need to be managed. At Windpower 2008, Dr. Dariush Faghani, Section Head Research & Development at Helimax, a member of Germanischer Lloyd group, gave methods of resolutions in his presentation "Dynamic Simulation of Utility-Scale Wind Farm Clusters".

Dr. Faghani addressed two aspects of utility-scale wind farm production forecasting. The first part introduced a methodology to estimate the hourly production of an individual wind farm. Simulated production was compared to actual production readings to evaluate the accuracy of the methodology. The second part discussed the challenges involved in synchronizing production time series from wind farms scattered over large areas. A simple methodology is proposed to tackle the challenge without resorting to complex and costly numerical simulations.

At present, the generation and transmission of operational impacts stemming from wind variability are not well quantified. Power authorities expect to be provided with long production time series or estimates for specific days of the week to have a long-term performance across the entire project site. Though such data are necessary for grid load planning, the nature of the wind resource makes it impossible to predict power output as easily as with other generation technologies.

The presentation's main objective was to present estimated wind power time series as compared to the usual expectations of power authorities. Furthermore, state-of-the-art production time series simulations for individual wind farms were discussed. Practical procedures to synchronize production time series from a series of wind farms spread over great distances were also introduced. The presentation provided a better understanding on these issues which need to be addressed in order to allow greater penetration of wind onto the grid.

About Helimax

Helimax, an affiliated company of Germanischer Lloyd based in Montréal, Canada, is an independent wind energy consultant who provides professional support from site prospecting to project commissioning and operation. Helimax excels in its particular application of engineering, meteorology and environmental science to utility-scale wind energy project development, implementation and operation.