Impact of Wind Power Forecasting on Unit Commitment and Dispatch

Abstract

The impact of wind power forecasting on unit commitment and dispatch is investigated in this paper. We present two unit commitment methods to address the variability and intermittency of wind power. The uncertainty in wind power forecasting is captured by a number of scenarios in the stochastic unit commitment approach, while a point forecast of wind power output is used in the deterministic alternative. Several cases with different wind power forecasts and reserve requirements are simulated. The preliminary results show that the quality of wind power forecasting has a great impact on unit commitment and dispatch. The stochastic method shows its value in terms of relatively lower dispatch cost. However, the dispatch results are also sensitive to the level of reserve requirement. Our results so far indicate that a deterministic method combined with an increased reserve requirement can produce results that are comparable to the stochastic case.