Synthetic wind speed generation for the simulation of realistic diurnal cycles

Synthetic wind-speed generators can provide a detailed characterisation of the wind variability at different time scales. A keen interest in the availability of synthetic wind speeds has recently risen in wind power modelling applications. In particular, a proper simulation of the diurnal and annual variability of the wind speed is sought that can lead to a more efficient grid integration of this renewable source. This paper proposes a statistical model for generating synthetic wind speeds consistent with both the probability density function and the spectral density function of a measured wind-speed dataset and that simulates accurately its average diurnal variation. To test the proposed methodology, multiple synthetic time series are generated using three long-term wind-speed time series recorded at a meteorological site in the Netherlands. The accuracy in terms of the statistical descriptors of the generated time series and their average diurnal variation is assessed with respect to the target data. We show that the average diurnal cycles present in all the three measured time series are always reproduced accurately, and that the statistical descriptors of the target dataset are constantly matched with high accuracy. Possible advantages of the present approach in terms of power system modelling are discussed.