A Markovian Approach to Model Power Availability of a Wind Turbine

A Markovian approach to model the energy production and power availability of a wind turbine is proposed. The wind speed time variability is taken into account by means of wind speed classification in a discrete reduced number of contiguous classes, each corresponding to an opportune range of values, starting from field measurement data. The duration of each class is statistically treated so to preserve information about its duration and the transition rates into all the other classes. The results obtained for the proposed wind model are compared with those obtained by means of a wind model which assumes the wind speed transitions as possible only among contiguous classes. Then, the wind turbine availability is taken into account by means of a simple model. Applications of the whole system obtained models to evaluate power availability expected values and to size local energy reserve units or alternative energy sources are presented.