MDA EarthSat Weather expand wind generation forecast to include Europe

MDA EarthSat Weather, a consulting group for weather risk and commodity weather products and services, have announced the expansion of their current wind generation forecast product range. They are expanding their focus beyond the U.S. and will now offer forecast data and information for stations in the UK, Ireland, and Germany bringing their forecasts and weather station data to Europe for the first time.

Forecast information is already available for a number of weather stations in the U.S., but with this expansion MDA Earthsat hope to bring detailed wind power forecasts to European companies involved in wind generation. The forecasts can help to provide the basis for hedging tools for wind power firms by providing the benchmarks for derivative products or index-based insurance covers.

The web-based system uses state-of-the-art ensemble forecast methods to produce hourly forecasts for lead times of up to ten days. In the short-term forecast, statistical techniques learn from wind data and power variations and develop highly accurate predictive relationships between present wind and future conditions. In the day-ahead and longer term forecasts, MDA EarthSat’s ensemble method removes model biases, and weights models according to their skill, greatly improving forecast skill over any single model technique.

“Our wind generation forecast has proven its skill in a wide variety of settings, from the hills of Texas, to the plains of Iowa and the mountain valleys of California and Oregon. We are excited to apply the lessons learned here to the work of forecasting wind generation from Spain to the North Sea,” said Dr. Daniel Kirk-Davidoff, Chief Scientist at MDA EarthSat.

Variation in wind speeds affects the performance of any wind powered electricity generation plant and so the availability of forecast and weather station data is critical for wind generation firms to hedge their risks. Data from firms like MDA Earthsat will help to expand the availability of wind hedging opportunities in Europe.