South East Australia Wind Power Study
Robert Davy and Peter Coppin
This report was prepared for the Australian Greenhouse Office by the CSIRO Wind Energy Research Unit, October 2003
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- South East Australia Wind Power Study
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Summary
Whilst wind farm development has been accelerated in Australia by the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET), the majority of proposed wind farms on the mainland to date are located in a restricted number of areas, with particular interest evident in South Australia.
This report has been undertaken to investigate the possible benefits of distributing wind farms across the south east of the continent, including both coastal and inland sites in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. Using modified Bureau of Meteorology wind data from 9 sites over 4 years, the results of this analysis indicate that more widespread distribution of wind farms (or greater locational 'diversity') would result in the following benefits:
- reduction in frequency and average length of extreme power events
- reduced variation in the average contribution of wind energy
- reduced volatility of average aggregated output
- improved ability to forecast total wind power output
- reduction in variance of total power on time scales up to about ten days long.
However it was found that seasonal variations were similar across the south east of the continent and hence large scale aggregation would have little effect on the annual seasonal cycle in wind power output.
These results indicate that variability in total wind power output can be reduced to some degree by wider distribution of numerous wind farms but remains substantial because synoptic patterns have a strong influence over the whole region. (Synoptic patterns are broad-scale wind patterns associated with the movement of low and high pressure systems across the continent.) Therefore, as in other countries forecasting would be a valuable tool in managing the impact of the variation. With wind farms and forecasting systems in place it will be possible to tune forecasts to measured wind farm output to improve forecast reliability and to develop appropriate confidence intervals according to the atmospheric conditions.
Some correlation was found between the wind and load in the National Electricity Market (NEM) on a state-wise basis. This effect was observed for South Australia and Victoria but only for summer weather patterns. Further analysis would be required to draw useful conclusions on the match between regional load especially peak load and regional wind regimes. A large proportion of variation in load does not appear to be correlated with the variation in wind, and this suggests that forecasting of wind (together with standard load forecasting) will be useful for understanding wind power’s potential to efficiently displace non-renewable generation.
In a number of cases, results for New South Wales were limited by the use of Bureau of Meteorology data which were not wholly representative of wind energy sites on the Great Dividing Range.
Note: It is important to remember that the results of this study are based on assumed state penetration levels and locational distributions based on current proposals. There has been no technically based analysis to date as to the levels of wind penetration that can be supported by any state. These factors mean that actual state penetration levels may ultimately be quite different from the levels assumed for this analysis. The results of this analysis depend on the assumed distributions and penetration levels and cannot necessarily be extrapolated if the actual distributions and capacities of wind farms in the south east of Australia differ.
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