Amount of dispatchable generation capacity required to cover 95% of net load under forecast errors as a function of wind forecast level for 10 GW of installed wind capacity for three different load forecast levels Brandon Mauch Jay Apt Pedro M S Carvalho Paulina Jaramillo 10.6084/m9.figshare.1011512.v1 https://iop.figshare.com/articles/figure/_Amount_of_dispatchable_generation_capacity_required_to_cover_95_of_net_load_under_forecast_errors_a/1011512 <p><strong>Figure 10.</strong> Amount of dispatchable generation capacity required to cover 95% of net load under forecast errors as a function of wind forecast level for 10 GW of installed wind capacity for three different load forecast levels. Back-up requirements peak for ERCOT at a wind forecast of 7500 MW and in MISO at 6000 MW.</p> <p><strong>Abstract</strong></p> <p>Day-ahead load and wind power forecasts provide useful information for operational decision making, but they are imperfect and forecast errors must be offset with operational reserves and balancing of (real time) energy. Procurement of these reserves is of great operational and financial importance in integrating large-scale wind power. We present a probabilistic method to determine net load forecast uncertainty for day-ahead wind and load forecasts. Our analysis uses data from two different electric grids in the US with similar levels of installed wind capacity but with large differences in wind and load forecast accuracy, due to geographic characteristics. We demonstrate that the day-ahead capacity requirements can be computed based on forecasts of wind and load. For 95% day-ahead reliability, this required capacity ranges from 2100 to 5700 MW for ERCOT, and 1900 to 4500 MW for MISO (with 10 GW of installed wind capacity), depending on the wind and load forecast values. We also show that for each MW of additional wind power capacity for ERCOT, 0.16–0.30 MW of dispatchable capacity will be used to compensate for wind uncertainty based on day-ahead forecasts. For MISO (with its more accurate forecasts), the requirement is 0.07–0.13 MW of dispatchable capacity for each MW of additional wind capacity.</p> 2013-08-01 00:00:00 gw wind power forecasts dispatchable generation capacity mw wind capacity load forecast values forecast errors wind forecast level dispatchable capacity miso load forecast uncertainty ercot wind power capacity load forecast levels load forecast accuracy Environmental Science