Evolving Role of Wind Forecasting in Market Operation at the CAISO

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the operational concerns as the amount of wind generation in our area increases over the next 5 years. The addition of 4500 more megawatts of wind generation in California will have an impact on both the transmission system and real-time operation of the California power grid. This paper focuses on the operational issues due to the intermittent nature of wind generation production. Day-ahead and hour-ahead market issues and the need to have reasonable accurate energy production forecasts in order to make optimum dispatch decisions on which generating units to start/stop or change energy schedules. There is also an impact on the amount of operating reserves and regulation resources that must be procured day-ahead. This paper focuses only on the operational and market issues