Intra-hour wind power characteristics for flexible operations

In this paper we analyze variability over time in wind energy, focusing primarily on intra-hour variations. We model the time duration dependency and other conditional aspects of wind variability. We analyze variability both in the time and frequency domains and relate this analysis with empirical variability probability distributions using historical wind power from the Bonneville Power Authority. Distribution fitting of in-tra-hour variability was done, considering normal, Laplace and skew-Laplace distributions. We found that of the variability is skewed and peaky indicating that skew-Laplace distributions are superior to other probability density functions to describe wind variability in time intervals of less than an hour. The time domain interpretation of the power spectral density estimates of the wind power variability indicate that for time duration of 30 minutes to 1 hour wind fluctuation can be quite considerable. We discuss the results of our analysis in relation to its potential short-term power system operations implications with high wind power penetration.