In 2008 the first phase of the Australian Wind Energy Forecasting System (AWEFS) was implemented with further enhancements completed in November 2009 and June 2010. One of the possible future enhancements identified by AEMO was the provision of extreme events alerting, that is the ability to forecast large rapid changes in wind farm output that may have a potential impact on power system security.
In 2010 AEMO entered into a consultancy agreement with the University of New South Wales for the development of a decision support tool to predict the potential for large rapid changes in aggregated wind farm output in the NEM. Specifically the agreement was to develop the use of multiple grid point data in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) forecasts to produce bounding time-series traces of forecast wind generation output and identify alarms or alert levels for potential large, rapid changes in wind power.
This consultancy agreement has been completed and a final report has been produced. It is AEMOs intention to review this report and the prototype decision support tool developed as part of the agreement with a view to implementing a production version of the tool.