Long-Term Wind Power Variability

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory started collecting wind power data from large commercial wind power plants (WPPs) in southwest Minnesota with dedicated dataloggers and communication links in the spring of 2000. Over the years, additional WPPs in other areas were added to and removed from the data collection effort. The longest data stream of actual wind plant output is more than 10 years. The resulting data have been used to analyze wind power fluctuations, frequency distribution of changes, the effects of spatial diversity, and wind power ancillary services. This report uses the multi-year wind power data to examine long-term wind power variability.