Forecasting Wind Speed using Artificial Neural Networks – A Case Study of a Potential Location of Saudi Arabia

¹ Center for Communication & IT Research, Research Institute, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Saudi Arabia
² Center for Engineering Research, Research Institute, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

^* Corresponding author: yparvej@kfupm.edu.sa

Abstract

The growing concerns regarding the depletion of oil/gas reserves and global warming have made it inevitable to seek energy from wind and other renewable energy resources. Forecasting wind speed is a challenging topic and has important applications in the design and operation of wind power systems, particularly grid connected renewable energy systems, and where forecasting wind speed helps in manipulating the load on the grid. Modern machine learning techniques including neural networks have been widely used for this purpose. As per literature, various models for estimating the hourly wind speed one hour ahead and the hourly wind speed data profile one day ahead have been developed. This paper proposes the use of Artificial Intelligence methods (AI) which are most suitable for the prediction and have provided best results in many situations. AI method involves nonlinear (or linear) and highly complex statistical relationships between input and output data, such as neural networks, fuzzy logic methods, Knearest Neighbors algorithm (KNN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). AI methods are promising alternatives for predicting wind speed and understanding the wind behavior for a particular region. In the present study (as a case-study), hourly average wind speed data of 13 years (1970-1982) of Qaisumah, Saudi Arabia has been used to evaluate the performance of ANN model. This data has been used for training the neural network. ANN is trained multiple times with different number of hidden neurons to forecast accurate wind speed. The efficiency of proposed model is validated by predicting wind speed of the Qaisumah region with the measured data. Mean Square Error (MSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE values) for proposed model are found to be 0.0912 and 6.65% respectively.