Winds of Change: Enhancing Wind Power Generation Forecasting with LSTM Models and Advanced Techniques in a Single Turbine Wind Farm

Abstract

This article presents a comprehensive analysis of wind power generation using a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model in the context of a wind farm with a single turbine. The novelty of the research lies in the integration of a technical model, predictive model, heat map analysis, and LSTM architecture to enhance forecasting accuracy. The performance of the forecasted model is evaluated using standard metrics, including Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). In the estimation phase, wind power generation is predicted based on current weather conditions and historical trends. Leveraging multivariate time series forecasting with LSTM through the Kera library, different look-back values are explored to optimise prediction accuracy. In particular, the study achieves favourable performance metrics, including MSE of 27.781, RMSE of 5.271, MAE of 3.281, and variance of 0.886 with a 70% training and 30% test split. Furthermore, a 60% training and 40% test split yield improved accuracy with MSE of 28.791, RMSE of 5.366, MAE of 3.376, and variance of 0.888. In the prediction phase, the LSTM model is employed to forecast power generation without relying on future weather information. Through various experiments, the optimal look-back period and number of neurones for the LSTM model are determined. Notably, the achieved mean absolute percent errors (MAPE) of 11.433% and 11.158% for 24 and 48 hours of data respectively showcase the impact of varying neuron counts on prediction accuracy. To further enhance predictive capabilities, optimisation techniques are implemented, involving adjustments to the LSTM model, including increased input batch size, batch normalisation, and dense layers. This optimisation leads to a substantial decrease in MAPE from 92.53% to 87.14% in a monthly prediction experiment. Furthermore, forward predictions are made for multiple days in the future, where LSTM successfully captures patterns and fluctuations, resulting in MAPEs of 70.74% for 24 hours, 39.26% for 2 days, and 51.48% for 1 week. Additionally, a comparison of two LSTM-based models, Autoencoder LSTM and FFT-Encoder-Decoder-LSTM, demonstrates the superior performance of the latter in terms of RMSE. This study emphasizes the potential of LSTM models in wind power generation prediction while introducing novel insights into optimizing model performance for accurate forecasting. The integration of technical and predictive models, along with heat map analysis and LSTM architecture, sets the groundwork for advancing wind power prediction methodologies.