Wind energy: INtegration anD FORecasting in the australian National Electricity Market - WINDFORNEM

Project Brief The Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) is funding this three-year research project at the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets (CEEM) to undertake research on facilitating the integration of wind generation into the Australian electricity industry. The grant forms part of the Australian Government's $14m Wind Energy Forecasting Capability (WEFC) initiative announced in its Energy White paper in 2004. The main intention of this initiative is to develop and deliver a state-of-the-art wind forecasting system to facilitate wind energy in the National Electricity Market. It is intended that the outcomes of this research project will contribute to this wind forecasting system, along with other projects running with the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO.   There are two strands for the WINDFORNEM project at CEEM. 1. Wind Power Integration - exploring the design and performance of the Austalian electricity industry. 2. Wind Energy Forecasting - including the behaviour of the atmosphere, statistical forecasting methods and strategies for wind farm control.

Project Duration: January 2006 - January 2009

The Team

• Hugh Outhred - coordinator and supervisor
• Iain MacGill - coordinator and supervisor
• Filita Barker - ME candidate for wind power integration
• Stuart Thorncraft - PhD candidate for wind power integration
• Nicholas Cutler - PhD candidate for wind energy forecasting
• Merlinde Kay - research associate for wind energy forecasting
• Muhammad Khalid - PhD candidate for wind energy forecasting

Current Status/News

17th Aug 2009
Nick Cutler graduated! and his PhD thesis is now available here.

14th April 2009
Stuart Thorncraft submitted his PhD thesis entitled: " Electricity Industry Decision-Making Frameworks with Particular Application to Operational Issues".

16th January 2009
Nick Cutler submitted his PhD thesis entitled: "Characterising the Uncertainty in Potential Large, Rapid Changes in Wind Power Generation".

18th November 2008
Nick Cutler won First Prize in the Energy in Society category at the 2008 National Postgraduate Student Awards at the Australian Institute of Energy [photo!]

1st October 2007
Leif-Erik Langhans has joined CEEM as part of the professional practicum program for a period of 6 months.  Leif obtained a master of Environmental Engineering and a Master of Business Engineering both from Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.  His latest works focused on the coupling of several types of renewable energies to smooth the intermittent and unreliable character of fluctuating wind power.  In July 2007 he took part in a project for the current Energy Summit held by the Federal Chancellor of Germany on the design of the future electricity market with huge amounts of renewable energies.

October 2007
After forecasting the maximum and minimum temperatures and rainfall for different locations over 26 weeks Merlinde Kay made it to the Grand Final of the AMOS Weather Tipping Competition [link].  She sadly lost by 1 point, however she did win the best maximum temperature forecast for the 26 week period.

August 2007

Research paper published online for the Wind Energy Journal. Title: "Detecting, Categorising and Forecasting Large Ramps in Wind Farm Power Output using Meteorological Observations and WPPT". Authors: Nicholas Cutler, Merlinde Kay, Kieran Jacka and Torben Skov Nielsen. See publications below.

7-10 May 2007

Nick presented a poster entitled "High-Risk Scenarios for Wind Power Forecasting in Australia" at the European Wind Energy Conference in Milan, Italy. See publications below.

Wind workshops

The project was kicked off with a workshop on wind energy forecasting and wind power system integration. The 2-day workshop, hosted by CEEM, took place on December 5 and 6, 2005 drawing speakers from Europe and Australia and participants from 10 interested organisations in Australia. The workshop program, summary and presentations are available here.

A second series of workshops was held in conjunction with the Global Wind Energy Conference (GWEC) in Adelaide in September, 2006. A wind power integration workshop was held on September 18, and a wind power forecasting workshop was held on Friday, September 22. More information and the presentations from these workshops are available here.

Publications

For any feedback on the WINDFORNEM project websites please contact Nicholas Cutler on n.cutler@unsw.edu.au