Assessing the Performance of Small Wind Energy Systems Using Regional Weather Data

Abstract

While large renewable power generation schemes, such as wind farms, are well monitored with a wealth of data provided through a SCADA system, the only information about the behaviour of small wind turbines is often only through the metered electricity production. Given the variability of electricity output in response to the local wind or radiation condition, it is difficult to ascertain whether particular electricity production in a metering period is the result of the system operating normally or if a fault is resulting in a sub-optimal production. This paper develops two alternative methods to determine a performance score based only on electricity production and proxy wind data obtained from the nearest available weather measurement. One method based on partitioning the data, consistent with a priori expectations of turbine performance, performs well in common wind conditions but struggles to reflect the effects of different wind directions. An alternative method based on Principal Component Analysis is less intuitive but shown to be able to incorporate wind direction.