1. Introduction
The use of green energy sources has grown since the realization of environmental concerns and subsequently the Kyoto protocol and its commitments have further encouraged the use of green energy sources. Wind energy is among the leading alternate clean energy sources after hydropower source. However, accurate forecasting of wind energy for electrical power generation farm is very complex because of continuous fluctuations in climatic conditions such as wind speed, humidity, temperature and so forth, thus making electrical power generation a stochastic process [
1]. Such fluctuations in output power may cause financial and operational risks for energy suppliers as any estimation error in power generation ultimately affects the bottom line of an energy provider. Hence, there is always a need for an efficient and reliable electrical power prediction system that has the capability to predict short-term fluctuations in power using pre-existing or historical data. Such a system will be helpful in providing a tool to wind energy producers for prediction of electrical power, proper planning and management for any implications ahead. Moreover, the wind energy prediction system will help in demand based metering where smart grids may interact with the wind-farms and their forecasted data may be used for estimating energy prices.
Because of the significance of predicting the wind electrical power and wind speed, several models have been proposed in literature over the last decade. For example, the existing prediction approaches include but is not limited to physical, statistical and time series models [
2,
3,
4,
5,
6], Fuzzy inference systems [
6,
7], artificial intelligence techniques such as artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector machines (SVMs) [
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14], Gaussian Process Regression [
15], Kalman Filter models [
16] and hybrid optimization models [
17,
18,
19]. Review of these research works revealed that the models were formulated on the basis of experience gained and historical data compiled from wind energy farms to determine the functional non-linear relationship between the wind energy generated and the influencing climatic factors. However, due to uncertainties (e.g., errors, data scarcity, human interference and subjective judgment) in the model fit and volatility of the data, scholars have resorted to the use of denoising techniques. Authors, for example, Catalão et al. [
13] applied wavelet transform in combination with ANN to predict wind power. Similarly, Sideratos [
15] and Louka et al. [
16] applied Gaussian process and Kalman filter to forecast wind power. These denoising techniques have the ability to model to a greater extent the volatility in the data thereby reducing the noise component exhibited in the data. Hence, non-stationarity in the data which could lead to wrong model coefficients leading to inaccurate predictions can be made stationary to improve the prediction accuracy of the model. Additionally, the hybrid models such as PSO-ANFIS [
17] which has been applied to predict electrical power with satisfactory results does not take into account the filtering of the data to eliminate any outliers. The objective of such techniques only minimizes the human interference in the model formulation. In the case of Wavelet-ANN [
13], only the denoising aspect of the data was considered. The limitations in the ANN (e.g., slower computation speed due to gradient algorithms, manual setting of parameters, local minima realization) model formulation steps were not. These limit the predictive strength of the hybrid models that suggest its enhancement. In continuance of that, although extensive research works have been accomplished over the past few years, accurate monitoring and prediction of short-term wind energy power still threatens electrical energy generation operations all around the world. The explanation of this situation is based on empirical analysis and results reported in literature which still requires the need to improve the model to fit correctly to the pre-existing data.
In the light of the foregoing discussions, we propose a hybrid Wavelet based PSO-ANFIS method for forecasting wind electrical power. The proposed model is a two-staged sequential mode prediction technique based on ANFIS in combination with wavelet transform-PSO as cost optimizer. The basic concept is to use PSO to improve the input constraints of the membership functions in the fuzzy domain while achieving a low error rate at the same time. Here, the wavelet transform was introduced as a pre-processing decomposition technology that was used to decompose the data into time and frequency domain thereby reducing the noise in the data as well as achieving stationarity. This stationarity is important because of the time series nature of the data used in the modelling. Another essence of using the wavelet was motivated by the fact that over the years, wavelet transform has shown a very good effect on data preprocessing than the Fourier transform. This is because the Fourier transform is most suitable for stationary data and can only provide zero frequency and high frequency resolution. Hence, for wavelet transform, there is little to no loss of information in the data used.
With regards to the above, the first stage used the wind direction, temperature, humidity and air pressure as the input data to predict the wind speed (output). At the second stage, the output predicted results (wind speed) from the first stage was used as the input data here to predict the actual electrical power from the SCADA. That is, actual historical electrical power measurements taken from SCADA and forecasted wind speed from stage one is used to train Wavelet-PSO-ANFIS model thus predicting a 24h electrical power. It must be noted that the SCADA measurements are taken as actual wind speed to wind power conversion and thus the prediction error is minimized by using actual wind speed to power data for a particular wind farm.
In view of this, the accuracy analysis was performed by analyzing the results using the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) criterion of the five existing algorithms including, Double-stage ANFIS (DSA), DSHGN (double-stage hybrid neural network combined with genetic algorithm), DSHGA (double-stage hybrid genetic algorithm with ANFIS), DSHPN (double-stage PSO and neural network), and DSN (double-stage neural network) with the developed algorithm in this paper, that is, DSHWPA (Dual-stage hybrid wavelet PSO ANFIS).
The results indicate that the proposed approach is more efficient, accurate, less computational time and low computational power requirements. Furthermore, the results suggest that the implemented Wavelet-PSO-ANFIS model can be helpful in managing wind power in energy supply industries using site specific data and therefore, capturing the volatility in the data in a more efficient way than the other methods reported in literature.
The paper unfolds as follows in a standard format where the first section is an introduction and background of the research. The development and description of the proposed method and various implications involved in the development of this model are presented in
Section 2.
Section 3 and
Section 4 summarizes the evaluation methods that are currently used to establish the basic parameters of a short-term wind electric power prediction model while
Section 5 shows the actual implementation of the proposed dual stage hybrid Wavelet-PSO-ANFIS model in a case study where sample data was available for various days of a wind farm.
Section 6 shows the accuracy analysis performed by analyzing the results in comparison with five other techniques such as Double-stage ANFIS (DSA), DSHGN (double-stage hybrid neural network combined with genetic algorithm), DSHGA (double-stage hybrid genetic algorithm with ANFIS), DSHPN (double-stage PSO and neural network), and DSN (double-stage neural network) with the developed algorithm in this paper, that is, DSHWPA (Dual-stage hybrid wavelet PSO ANFIS).
Section 7 summarizes our research and provides an overview of the prediction method, results and future recommendations. Reference section enlists a detailed list of cited sources in this research while raw data from the analysis are shown in appendices.
4. Performance Evaluation
Performance evaluation of any forecasting model is very crucial for benchmarking the model with already existing models. Thus, evaluating the accuracy and precision of our proposed hybrid dual-stage Wavelet-PSO-ANFIS (DSHWPA) model for the prediction of wind speed and wind electrical power using error measurement criteria like, mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), root mean square error (RMSE), standard deviation of errors and sum-squared error (SSE) is essential. Error analysis criteria were computed using the relationships defined in this section of research study. MAPE was calculated using the relationship as defined in Equations (14) and (15) below:
where,
and
are the actual and forecasted wind electrical power in kW at a given hour in a day while
is the average value of actual electrical power produced by a wind farm and
N is the prediction horizon.
SSE was calculated using the Equation (16) as shown below:
Similarly, the RMSE for the forecasting model was calculated using the relation as defined in Equation (17) below:
Finally, the SDE of error was calculated using relationships as shown in Equations (18)–(20):
where,
is the forecasting error at any given hour
h and
is the mean prediction error for the forecasting model. The variance in the observed errors shows the reliability of the prediction model, a high variance value shows the model is unstable and wide range errors were observed while forecasting electrical power [
18,
26]. From Equation (14), a daily variance in prediction errors can be calculated using the relationship shown in Equations (21) and (22) below:
5. Practical Implementation and Numerical Results
The proposed algorithm of dual-stage hybrid Wavelet-PSO-ANFIS was applied for short-term electrical power prediction in a small wind electrical powered grid station using a single wind turbine having max. wind speed (15 km/h) rated power of 2800 kW. The major inputs for the first stage include the environmental variables from NWP meteorological forecasts for the purpose of training and forecasting future wind speed. Furthermore, in this section data dependency was also analyzed using distributed data sets to test the algorithm and results are discussed. The target prediction timeline for the selected model was 1 day while the data for training was gathered from NWP and SCADA systems for a year as a large data set ensures proper development of member functions in fuzzy domain. The results of the forecast of 4 days (each corresponding to one season) are discussed and analyzed for error and prediction accuracy analysis. The forecasted results along with the actual results are plotted to show the accuracy and preciseness of the model. The
Figure 5,
Figure 6,
Figure 7,
Figure 8,
Figure 9,
Figure 10,
Figure 11 and
Figure 12 show the results of stage 1 and 2 along with the actual observed data for comparison. Also,
Figure 5 and
Figure 6 show the predicted results for wind speed and wind electrical power for a spring day. There were strong winds from hour 16 to hour 23 thus creating high electrical power of up to 900 kW in that region. The forecasted and actual data are almost aligned and the shape is also in correlation to each other which shows the accuracy of the model. Similarly,
Figure 7 and
Figure 8 show the predicted results for wind speed and wind electrical power for a fall day. There were strong winds in the initial hours while random wind speeds were observed in the latter part of the day. The forecasted and actual data are shown for the purpose of comparison.
Figure 9 and
Figure 10 depict the forecasting results for a winter day. There were strong winds throughout the day, which were predicted by the forecasted model and a mean electrical power of 700 kW was generated as a result of continuous winds. Similarly,
Figure 11 and
Figure 12 shows the predicted results for wind speed and wind electrical power for a summer day. There were strong winds from hour 15 to hour 20 thus the electrical power generation is the maximum for that duration. The forecasted and actual data are shown for the purpose of comparison.
Table 1,
Table 2,
Table 3 and
Table 4 show the calculated accuracy criteria for the proposed model for 4 days. The first stage has comparatively a high error rate in comparison to the second stage.
In the case of spring day, the mean absolute percentage error value of 9.52% was observed in Stage 1 while this error was minimized by the use of a second stage and actual MAPE of 2.70% was observed in the prediction of wind electrical power.
As seen in
Table 2, in the case of fall day, the mean absolute percentage error value of 4.49% was observed in Stage 1 while this error was increased at the second stage and actual MAPE of 5.64% was observed in the prediction of wind electrical power. Similarly, as seen in
Table 3, in case of a winter day, the mean absolute percentage error value of 3.18% was observed in Stage 1 while this error was decreased at the second stage and actual MAPE of 1.03% was observed in the prediction of wind electrical power.
As seen in
Table 4, in case of a summer day, the mean absolute percentage error value of 3.54% was observed in Stage 1 while this error was amplified at the second stage and actual MAPE of 13.75% was observed in the prediction of wind electrical power.
The summary analysis of errors is shown for each stage as
Table 5 and
Table 6. As seen in
Table 5, the total average MAPE of 5.18% is observed in Stage 1 which is a good MAPE value for the first stage. Similarly, average SDE, RMSE and SSE values of 3.51, 0.16, 0.77 km/hour were observed in the prediction of wind speed.
As seen in
Table 6, the total average MAPE of 5.78% was observed in prediction of electrical power. Compared to total power of 2800 kW these error values are very low, thus prediction accuracy is high.
Eseye, Zhang, and Zheng [
36] reported the accuracy of DSN, DSHGN, DSHPN, DSA and DSHGA prediction model in the form of MAPE as 50.4%, 49.04%, 43.3%, 31.6% and 19.2%, respectively. Compared to our approach this MAPE value of 5.78% is superior and this shows the significance of the forecasting model proposed in this research. Input data dependency is another criterion for any forecasting model; for testing the input dependency of our model, the data set was distributed into 4 subsets containing unique input variables. These subsets were used to train our algorithm and subsequently case study based forecasting was performed to estimate the relationship of data towards the prediction accuracy of the model. Subset 1 contained information about the wind speed and direction only while subset 2 contained information about the wind speed, direction and air temperature. Subset 3 contained information on wind speed, direction, air temperature, and air pressure while subset 4 comprised of all the variables including wind speed, direction, air temperature, air pressure, and humidity.
The data dependency results for both stages can be seen in
Table 7 and
Table 8 where all the subsets are compared to MAPE errors for one day of each season. The data subset 4 has the best MAPE while subset 1 has the worst highest MAPE for both stages. Using only Subset 1 as input data led to an average MAPE of 5.67% and 6.57% in stage 1 and stage 2 respectively, while average MAPE was improved to 5.40% and 6.20% for stage 1 and 2 respectively in case of subset 2. Similarly, subset 3 and subset 4 led to mean MAPE of (5.39% & 5.92%) and (5.18% & 5.78%) respectively for subset 3 and subset 4. The average computation time for a full 5 input based prediction model using MATLAB on windows based computer having specification Intel Corei7-4510U 2.6 GHz (4 CPUs), 8 GB RAM was around 12 s, thus the proposed model is reliable, accurate, precise and requires less computational time.
6. Comparison of Developed Code DSHWPA with Five Other Forecasting Methods
The accuracy analysis was performed by analyzing the results using the MAPE criterion of the five existing algorithms including, Double-stage ANFIS (DSA), DSHGN (double-stage hybrid neural network combined with genetic algorithm), DSHGA (double-stage hybrid genetic algorithm with ANFIS), DSHPN (double-stage PSO and neural network), and DSN (double-stage neural network) with the developed algorithm in this paper, that is, DSHWPA (Dual-stage hybrid wavelet PSO ANFIS).
The algorithms were replicated in Matlab to analyze the forecasting prediction accuracy of the method developed in this research. For comparison, the MAPE criterion was selected, as this is the relevant criterion selected by various researchers in the field of Wind Power prediction. The results of analysis are summarized in
Table 9 as shown below.
The accuracy analysis show that the MAPE of the DSHWPA technique developed in this study had an average value of 5.78% after second stage. As depicted in
Table 9 using similar dataset and similar hardware the average value of MAPE for DSA, DSN, DSHGN, DSHGA, DSHPN were 7.18%, 11.82%, 10.62%, 6.75%, and 8.91%. The analysis revealed that the MAPE for the five techniques was improved by 19.50%, 51.10%, 45.56%, 14.31% and 35.11%. Based on the MAPE technique the developed technique resulted in at least 19.50% improvement from DSA method which is a significant for short-term wind power prediction thus our technique has significant edge over the highlighted five techniques based on the MAPE criterion.