Capacity Factor Estimation of Wind Farms Accounting for Outage Probability of Individual Wind Turbines

Abstract

The power generation sector accounts for a significant portion of GHG emissions, and many countries strive for the large-scale adoption of renewable generation. Although the intermittent nature of renewables brings about complications in energy system planning, the share of renewable generations is increasing to the greatest extent. The wind generation has drawn increasing attention to expanding the use of renewable energy to reduce carbon emissions from the power generation sector, and the estimation of capacity factor is crucial in energy system modeling. This study develops a mathematical model for estimating the capacity factor of a wind farm with the consideration of outage probability of individual turbines. In addition, the power curves and wind speed distribution of the wind farm need to be estimated, which is demonstrated with a wind farm in Korea. It is asserted that the proposed method may render the wind farm capacity factor effectively. Thus, the results from this study can be useful for energy system modeling involving wind generations.

Keywords

• wind farm
• wind turbine
• capacity factor
• power curve
• outage probability