Reduction of wind power variability through geographic diversity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how geographic diversity among wind farms can reduce power variability, using Monte Carlo simulations to determine the limits of smoothing based on the number and spread of wind plants.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative analysis of the maximum potential for wind power smoothing through geographic diversification, highlighting the influence of plant number and area size.

Findings

Greater geographic spread increases variability smoothing.

Number of wind plants correlates with reduced fluctuations.

Upper bounds on smoothing are identified through simulations.

Abstract

The variability of wind-generated electricity can be reduced by aggregating the outputs of wind generation plants spread over a large geographic area. In this chapter we utilize Monte Carlo simulations to investigate upper bounds on the degree of achievable smoothing and clarify how the degree of smoothing depends on the number of plants and on the size of the geographic area over which they are spread.