Index for Wind Power Variability

Variability of large scale wind power generation is dependent on several factors: characteristics of installed wind power plants, size of the area where the plants are installed, geographic dispersion within that area and its weather regime(s). Variability can be described by ramps in power generation, i.e. changes from time period to time period. Given enough data points, it can be described with a probability density function. This approach focuses on two dimensions of variability: duration of the ramp and probability distribution. This paper proposes an index based on these two dimensions to enable comparisons and characterizations of variability under different conditions. The index is tested with real, large scale wind power generation data from several countries. Considerations while forming an index are discussed, as well as the main results regarding what the drivers of variability experienced for different data.