Powerformer: A temporal-based transformer model for wind power forecasting

Abstract

Wind Power Forecasting has emerged as a critical and dynamic research area in response to the growing demand for renewable energy. The unpredictable and stochastic nature of wind conditions, encompassing factors such as wind speed, wind direction, air temperature, and barometric pressure, poses unique challenges for accurate forecasting of wind power generation. Reliable wind power generation forecasts are essential for optimizing energy grid management, ensuring grid stability, and facilitating the integration of wind energy with existing power systems. To address these challenges, this research introduces Powerformer, a Transformer-based model designed to improve the accuracy of wind power prediction. Powerformer utilizes the infrastructure of the Transformer with innovative modifications to address the complexity of wind power prediction, enhancing temporal feature extraction capabilities while reducing complexity. The research in this study includes a comprehensive set of experiments, revealing that Powerformer achieves superior results among all models. Furthermore, the model exhibits stronger robustness, as confirmed through a series of ablation experiments validating the reasonableness of the model design.