STOCHASTIC MODELING OF WIND VELOCITIES TIME-SERIES

The knowledge of wind speed time series is necessary to evaluate, for instance, the power values produced by wind turbines, in order to inve stigate load matching and storage requirements. The usual description of the stochastic properties of wind speed independent of its directio n is here criticized and an approach based on the coupled analysis of both wind speed and direction is proposed. Two stochastic models simul ating three hourly wind speed and direction time series are investigat ed; encouraging results are obtained with a scheme combining a Markov chain model and a Discrete Auto Regressive Model of order 2 (DAR(2)). A comparison with 42 years of wind data measured at Brindisi airport, Italy, is made, showing that this compound model is able to generate d irection and speed sequences that fairly agree, in the statistical sen se, with the observed time series at the considered site. (C) 1998 Els evier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.