IEA Wind Task 36 -An Overview

Wind power forecasts have been operationally used for over 25 years. Despite this fact, there are still many possibilities to improve and enhance forecasts, both from the weather prediction side and in the use of the forecasts. Until now, most applications have focused on deterministic forecast methods. This is likely to change in the future as penetration levels increase and weather conditions become more unstable due to climate change. Probabilistic methods are therefore receiving more attention from users. The International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Task 36 on Wind Power Forecasting organises international collaboration, among national weather centres with an interest and/or large projects on wind forecast improvements (NOAA, DWD, UK MetOffice, ...), forecast vendors and forecast users to facilitate scientific exchange to be prepared for future challenges.Collaboration is open to IEA Wind member states; 12 countries are already actively collaborating. The Task is divided in three work packages: Work Package (WP) 1 is a collaboration on the improvement of the scientific basis for the wind predictions themselves. This includes numerical weather prediction (NWP) model physics, but also widely distributed information on accessible datasets. This WP will also organise benchmarks for NWP models. The efforts of WP2 resulted in the publication of an international pre-standard (an IEA Recommended Practice) on how to select an optimal wind power forecast solution for a specific application. The focus of WP3 is on the engagement of end users to disseminate the best practice in the use of wind power predictions, especially probabilistic forecasts.The paper presents an overview of the recently completed first phase and the ongoing second phase of IEA Task 36 on Wind Power Forecasting, which provides a forum forinternational collaboration in this important field for meteorologists, wind power forecasters and end users. For collaboration, please contact the author (grgi@dtu.dk) and seethe website at www.ieawindforecasting.dk.