A hybrid wind power forecasting model based on data mining and wavelets analysis

Accurate forecasting of wind power plays a key role in energy balancing and wind power integration into the grid. This paper proposes a novel time-series based K-means clustering method, named T.S.B K-means, and a cluster selection algorithm to better extract features of wind time-series data. A hybrid of T.S.B K-means, discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and harmonic analysis time series (HANTS) methods, and a multilayer perceptron neural network (MLPNN) is developed for wind power forecasting. The proposed T.S.B K-means classifies data into separate groups and leads to more appropriate learning for neural networks by identifying anomalies and irregular patterns. This improves the accuracy of the forecast results. A cluster selection method is developed to determine the cluster that provides the best training for the MLPNN. This significantly accelerates the forecast process as the most appropriate portion of the data rather than the whole data is used for the NN training. The wind power data is decomposed by the Daubechies D4 wavelet transform, filtered by the HANTS, and pre-processed to provide the most appropriate inputs for the MLPNN. Time-series analysis is used to pre-process the historical wind-power generation data and structure it into input-output series. Wind power datasets with diverse characteristics, from different wind farms located in the United States, are used to evaluate the accuracy of the hybrid forecasting method through various performance measures and different experiments. A comparative analysis with well-established forecasting models shows the superior performance of the proposed forecasting method.