Probabilistic wind power forecasts with an inverse power curve transformation and censored regression

Forecasting wind power is an important part of a successful integration of wind power into the power grid. Forecasts with lead times longer than 6 h are generally made by using statistical methods to post‐process forecasts from numerical weather prediction systems. Two major problems that complicate this approach are the non‐linear relationship between wind speed and power production and the limited range of power production between zero and nominal power of the turbine. In practice, these problems are often tackled by using non‐linear non‐parametric regression models. However, such an approach ignores valuable and readily available information: the power curve of the turbine's manufacturer. Much of the non‐linearity can be directly accounted for by transforming the observed power production into wind speed via the inverse power curve so that simpler linear regression models can be used. Furthermore, the fact that the transformed power production has a limited range can be taken care of by employing censored regression models. In this study, we evaluate quantile forecasts from a range of methods: (i) using parametric and non‐parametric models, (ii) with and without the proposed inverse power curve transformation and (iii) with and without censoring. The results show that with our inverse (power‐to‐wind) transformation, simpler linear regression models with censoring perform equally or better than non‐linear models with or without the frequently used wind‐to‐power transformation. © 2013 The Authors. Wind Energy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.