2016 International Conference on Cogeneration, Small Power Plants and District Energy (ICUE 2016)
BITEC, Bang-Na, Thailand, 14-16 September 2016
Modelling the Ramping Behaviour of Wind Turbines
Femin V, Veena R, Petra I , Mathew S
Universiti Brunei Darussalam
Jalan Tungku link, Gadong B E 1410, Brunei Darussalam.
Abstract—Being stochastic phenomena, magnitude and
direction of wind spectra, available at a site, may vary with time
which results in frequent changes in the output from the wind
turbines. This frequent fluctuation in the output from the
turbines makes the grid integration of wind energy systems
rather challenging. Understanding the ramping behaviour of
wind turbines under fluctuating wind conditions is essential for
the efficient management of the power grids integrated with
different generating options. In this paper, a mathematical
model is presented to estimate the ramping behaviour of wind
turbines by considering the Weibull probability distribution of
wind velocity and the power curve analytics of the wind turbine.
The developed model was tested with the real performance data
from a wind turbine of 2MW rated capacity. By analyzing the
Normalized Root Mean Squared Error between the estimated
and observed performances, it was found that the model could
predict the ramp events with an accuracy of around 85 per cent.
Index Terms-- Power curve, Ramp event, Weibull
probability distribution, Wind energy, Wind velocity
I. INTRODUCTION
Wind energy, being a clean, and sustainable energy
resource, has increasing contributions in the modern power
systems in the recent years. For example, with an addition of
63GW in 2015, the world's cumulative wind capacity has
reached up to 433 GW. With these installations, wind energy
today meets 3.7% of the Global electricity demand [1], [2].
The future projections indicate that, by 2030, the global
cumulative installed capacity would reach 2000 GW,
contributing 16.7%-18.8% of the World’s power demand [2].
Due to the cubic velocity-power relationship, the energy
produced from a wind turbine is highly sensitive to the
strength of the wind available at the site, where it is installed.
As wind is stochastic in nature, its magnitude and direction
changes frequently, which in turn result in drastic changes in
the turbine output. These frequent and uncertain changes pose
significant challenges to wind farm operators and power
system managers in integrating the intermittent wind source to
the grid. Hence, an understanding on the ramping behaviour of
wind turbines, under fluctuating wind conditions, is essential
for the efficient and effective management of the wind
Hazra J
UBD | IBM Centre
IBM Research Bangalore, KA, India.
integrated power grids. For example, to keep the balance
between demand and supply, power system operators should
have an estimate on the expected contribution from wind on
an hourly basis, so that other generating options can be kept
ready for ensuring adequate power supply.
Keeping these in view, several attempts are made to
understand the ramping behaviour of wind turbines and there
by improve the dispatching strategy of the power system.
Ramp events are defined in different ways in these studies.
Some of the authors defined it on the basis of the threshold
value with respect to name plate capacity of the turbine [3]-
[6], whereas others take it as the rate of change of power
over a given time interval [7], [8]. We adopt the later approach
in this paper.
Most of these investigations are data driven, where the
performance data from an existing wind farm is used for
developing the ramp models. Statistical models [4], [5], [9] or
machine learning methods [7], [10] are widely used. In the
statistical approach probability density and cumulative
distribution functions of the ramp events are used where as in
the machine learning, methods like the Artificial Neural
Network (ANN), Support Vector Machine (SVR),
Classification And Regression Tree (CART) and Random
Forest (RF) are being used [7], [10].
In this paper, we present a different approach in which the
ramp behaviour of the turbines are defined by mathematical
models. For this, we are considering the velocity power
relationship of the turbine along with the probability
distribution of the wind velocity. Weibull model is used to
define the distribution of wind velocity at the site. As the
historic ramp data is not required for the model development
under this approach, the proposed method can be applied for
both the existing as well as planned wind energy projects.
II. MODEL DEVELOPMENT
A. The Power model
The typical power curve of a pitch controlled wind turbine is
shown in Fig. 1. The variations in power, between the cut- in
 2016 International Conference on Cogeneration, Small Power Plants and District Energy (ICUE 2016)
BITEC, Bang-Na, Thailand, 14-16 September 2016

1.090
§V ·
k ¨ V ¸ (6)
¨V ¸
© m ¹

and
2Vm (7)
c
S
Where Vm is the average wind velocity and V V is the
standard deviation of the wind velocity.

C. Energy Generated by the Wind Turbine

Let EIR be the energy generated by the wind turbine
Figure 1. Typical power curve of a pitch controlled wind turbine.
between the cut in velocity VI and rated velocity VR. Then,
VR
velocity VI, and rated velocity VR, can be expressed in a
EIR T ³ PV f (V ) dV (8)
general form of VI

PV aV n  b (1) Where T is the time period for which the energy is to be

calculated. Substituting for PV and f(V) from (3) and (4),
Applying the above expression to the boundary conditions at
VI and VR, we get V k 1
R
ªV n  VIn º k § V ·  c  dV
V
k

EIR PR T ³ « n n » ¨ ¸ e (9)
aVI n  b 0 and aVR n  b PR (2) VI ¬ VR  VI ¼
c© c ¹
where a and b are coefficients and n is the velocity-power
proportionality, and PR is the rated power of the wind turbine. For simplifying the above equation, let us introduce a
From the above equations a and b can be solved. Substituting variable X such that
k
these in (1) and simplifying, we get §V ·
X ¨ ¸ (10)
§ V V n
· n ©c¹
I Then
PV PR ¨ ¸ (3)
¨ V n V n
¸
© R ¹ I § VI ·
k
§ VR ·
k
§ VO ·
k

Between the rated velocity VR and cut out velocity Vo , the XI

¨ c ¸ , XR ¨ c ¸ , XO ¨ c ¸ (11)
© ¹ © ¹ © ¹
power developed by the turbine is PR. The proportionality
constant n for a given turbine can be estimated from its By substituting (11) in (9), rearranging and simplifying,
manufacturer’s power curve, following the curve fitting we get
method [11].
XR n
PR T c n PR T VIn
³
EIR X k
e  X dX  ª¬e  X I  e  X R º¼
V R
n
 VI n
XI V R
n
 VI n
 (12)
B. Defining the varaiations in the wind velocity
It is widely accepted that the variations in wind velocity at Similarly, the energy generated by the turbine between
a given site can be characterised by the Weibull distribution VR and Vo is given by
[12]-[14]. In its general form, the probability density functions
(PDF) of the Weibull distribution is given by
VO

ERO T PR ³ f (V ) dV (13)
k
k 1 §V ·
k §V · ¨ ¸
©c¹
f (V ) ¨ ¸ e (4) VR
c© c ¹
where V is the wind velocity and k and c are the shape and
Substituting f(V) from (4) in (13)
scale parameters respectively. Similarly ,the cumulative
distribution of wind velocities can be expressed as k
VO k 1 §V ·
k §V · ¨ ¸
§V ·
¨ ¸
k
ERO PR T ³ ¨ ¸ e ©c¹
dV (14)
F (V ) 1  e ©c¹
(5) VR
c© c ¹

Weibull parameters k and c for a location can be computed

from the sites wind data using the expressions
 2016 International Conference on Cogeneration, Small Power Plants and District Energy (ICUE 2016)
BITEC, Bang-Na, Thailand, 14-16 September 2016

2
As ³ f (V ) dV F (V ) , the above equation can be 1 N §š ·
RMSE
N
¦ ¨ y i  yi ¸
i 1¨ ¸
(18)
simplified as © ¹
š

ERO 
Pr T e  Xr
e  Xo
 (15)
Where y i and yi are the modeled and observed
fluctuations in energy at the ith hour and N is the total number
of data points. The RMSE values are then normalized by the
Hence, the total energy generated by the wind turbine
range of actual energy fluctuation, to estimate the NRMSE.
over the whole ranges of wind speeds is given by
Thus NRMSE is given by
ET EIR  ERO RMSE
(16) NRMSE
§ · (19)
¨ y (max)  y (min) ¸
D. Ramp Event © ¹
Under this error analysis, a reasonably low NRMSE of
The energy generated at any two consecutive intervals can 0.1538 could be observed between the modeled and observed
be represented as E (Tt ) and E (Tt 't ) .Thus the change in ramps from the wind turbines. This indicates that our
energy, which is the ramp event during that time, is given by proposed model gives good agreement with the actual ramp
observations from the turbines.
'E (T ) E (Tt 't )  E (Tt ) (17)

For calculating the hourly ramps from the turbine, ǻW can be 1500
taken as 1 hour. Energy fluctuation (kWh)
III. MODEL VALIDATION 1000
Modeled Variation
Observed Variation
The field performance data from a wind turbine of 2MW 500
rated capacity was used to validate the ramp models
discussed above.
0
0 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23
TABLE I. TECHNICAL SPECIFICIFICATION OF THE DEWIND D9.2
TURBINE
-500
Operational Specification
Turbine Rated
Rated Power Cut-in speed Cut-out speed -1000
velocity
(PR) (VI) (VO) Time (h)
(VR)
DeWind Figure 2. Modeled and observed energy variation on 06-06-2016.
2,000 kW 4.5 m/s 25 m/s 12m/s
D9.2

The specifications of the turbine are shown in Table I. 2500

The velocity power proportionality for the turbine, deduced
by curve fitting method was 0.9048 The performance data 2000
were collected at 10-minute interval which is then averaged 1500
Energy fluctuation (kWh)

over the hour to estimate the hourly ramping behavior of the Modeled Variation
turbines at the site. 1000 Observed Variation

The ramp rates computed using the proposed model are 500
compared with the field observations in Fig. 2 to Fig. 6. 0
Comparison for five days are presented here as the 0 2 7 9 11 17 20 22
representative results. It can be seen that the ramping, -500
estimated by the model, matches well with the field
observations. -1000

-1500
The quantify the accuracy of the proposed model, the root
mean squared error (RMSE) between the modeled and Time (h)
observed ramp rates were calculated. RMSE is estimated by Figure 3. Modeled and observed energy variation on 07-06-2016.
 2016 International Conference on Cogeneration, Small Power Plants and District Energy (ICUE 2016)
BITEC, Bang-Na, Thailand, 14-16 September 2016

IV. CONCLUSION
A mathematical model to estimate the ramping behavior
1500
of the wind turbine is presented in this paper. The model
Modeled Variation integrates the power characteristics of the turbine with the
1000
Energy fluctuation (kWh)

Observed Variation probability distribution of wind at candidate sites to arrive at

the energy generated during consecutive time periods and
500 there by the ramping pattern. The model was validated with
the data from a wind turbine of 2MW rated capacity. The
0 proposed model could predict the ramp events with an
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22
accuracy of around 85 per cent. The model could be a useful
-500 tool for estimating the ramp rates of wind energy projects,
which are both functional, as well as under planning.
-1000

V. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
-1500
Time (h)
The authors are thankful to the University of Brunei
Darussalam for extending necessary supports during the
Figure 4. Modeled and observed energy variation on 08-06-2016.
course of this study.
REFERENCES
1500 [1] REN21, “Renewables global status report 2016,” Renewable energy
policy network for the 21st century Tech. Rep., 2016.
[2] GWEC, “Global wind energy outlook 2014,”Global wind energy
Energy fluctuation (kWh)

Modeled Variation
1000 council Tech. Rep., 2015.
Observed Variation
[3] J. Zhang, A. Florita, B.-M. Hodge, and J. Freedman, “Ramp forecasting
performance from improved short-term wind power forecasting,”
500 National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO, Tech.
Rep. NREL/CP-5D00-61730, May 2014.
[4] C. W. Potter, E. Grimit and B. Nijssen, “Potential benefits of a
0 dedicated probabilistic rapid ramp event forecast tool,” in Proc. IEEE
0 2 4 6 13 15 17 19 21 23 Power Syst. Conf. Expo.(PSCE), Seattle, WA, USA, 2009, pp. 1–5..
[5] A. K. Das and B. M. Mazumdar, “A Statistical Model for Wind Power
-500 on the Basis of Ramp Analysis,” Int. J. Green Energy, Oct. 2013.
[6] C. Kamath, “Understanding wind ramp events through analysis of
historical data,” in Proc. 2010 Transm. Distrib. Conf. Expo., New
-1000 Orleans, LA, USA, pp. 1–6.
Time (h) [7] H. Zheng and A. Kusiak, “Prediction of Wind Farm Power Ramp
5DWHVௗ$'DWD-Mining Approach,” J. Sol. energy Eng., vol. 131, no. 3,
Figure 5. Modeled and observed energy variation on 09-06-2016. pp. 031011, Aug. 2009.
[8] R. Sevlian and R. Rajagopal, “Detection and statistics of wind power
ramps,” IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 3610–3620, 2013.
[9] V. Gevorgian and D. Corbus, “Ramping Performance Analysis of the
Kahuku Wind-Energy Battery Storage System,” National Renewable
1500 Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO, Tech. Rep. NREL/MP-5D00-
59003, Nov. 2013.
[10] C. Reddyௗ K. Balaraman, A. Patil, and K. Vasudevan “Wind power
ramp forecasting for stochastic unit commitment in Smart Grid
Energy fluctuation (kWh)

1000
Modeled Variation environment.,” 2013 IEEE Innov. Smart Grid Technol. (ISGT Asia), pp.
Observed Variation 1–6, 2013.
500 [11] S. Mathew, and G. S. Philip. 2.05—Wind turbines: evolution, basic
principles, and classifications, in-Chief: Ali (Ed.), Comprehensive
renewable energy 2012,pp. 93-111.
0 [12] D. Weisser, “A wind energy analysis of Grenada: An estimation using
the ‘Weibull’ density function,” Renew. Energy, vol. 28, no. 11, pp.
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 17 19 22
1803–1812, 2003.
[13] M. J. Holland and K. Ikeda, "Location robust estimation of predictive
-500
Weibull parameters in short-term wind speed forecasting", in
Proc.2015 IEEE Int. Conf. Acoust., Speech Signal Process. (ICASSP)
pp. 3996–4000.
-1000
[14] A. Chauhan and R. P. Saini, “Statistical analysis of wind speed data
Time (h) using Weibull distribution parameters,” in Proc Non Conventional
Energy (ICONCE), 2014 1st International Conference on, pp. 160–163.
Figure 6. Modeled and observed energy variation on 10-06-2016.