Estimation of wind power availability and capacity credit for multiple wind farms

Integrating wind power increases the load variation and the reserve requirements for contingencies due to its intermittent nature. Conventional generation can obtain capacity credit because they can produce “firm” power during the peak load demand time when utilities are especially concerned about the wind power availability. As wind power is intermittent it is normally given zero or small capacity credit. In this paper, the wind availability and capacity credit for multiple wind farms distributed in Wyoming are analyzed based on actual wind data. Considering multiple wind farms as part of one big wind farm distributed over a large area can decrease the wind power variation and increase the capacity credits. As the method used here to calculate capacity credit is the same one used by electric utilities, the potential for awarding more capacity credit to multiple wind farms is very good.