The prediction of the wind speed at different heights by machine learning methods

In Turkey, many enterprisers started to make investment on renewable energy systems after new legal regulations and stimulus packages about production of renewable energy were introduced. Out of many alternatives, production of electricity via wind farms is one of the leading systems. For these systems, the wind speed values measured prior to the establishment of the farms are extremely important in both decision making and in the projection of the investment. However, the measurement of the wind speed at different heights is a time consuming and expensive process. For this reason, the success of the techniques predicting the wind speeds is fairly important in fast and reliable decision-making for investment in wind farms. In this study, the annual wind speed values of Kutahya, one of the regions in Turkey that has potential for wind energy at two different heights, were used and with the help of speed values at 10 m, wind speed values at 30 m of height were predicted by seven different machine learning methods. The results of the analysis were compared with each other. The results show that support vector machines is a successful technique in the prediction of the wind speed for different heights.