A case study into improving the 24-month mid-term forecasting of wind energy by combining with PVs

Forecasting the output of wind energy plants over many months is problematic because of the unpredictability of the weather. Usually, a large proportion of conventional generation must be standing by as reserve capacity in case the weather is not conducive to that type of renewable technology. A possible solution is to operate in conjunction different types of renewables. For instance, during stormy weather the output of a PV plant might be low, however, the output of a wind farm will be high. To investigate the appropriateness of this aggregation, data from a South Australian wind farm was studies, along with a hypothetical PV plant, to determine whether the output of the conjoined plant was more reliable than that of the wind farm on its own.