Energy and Power Engineering, 2013, 5, 414-417
doi:10.4236/epe.2013.54B080 Published Online July 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/epe)
Wind Power Forecasting using an Artificial Neural
Network for ASPCS
Kazuma Hanada1, Takataro Hamajima1, Makoto Tsuda2, Daisuke Miyagi2, Takakazu Shintomi3,
Tomoaki Takao4, Yasuhiro Makida5, M as at ak a Kajiwara6
1Department of Electrical and Electronics Systems, Hachinohe Institute of Technology, Aomori, Japan
2Department of Electrical Engineer ing, Tohoku University, Miyagi, Japan
3Advanced Research Institute for the Sciences and Humanities, Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan
4Department of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan
5High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, Ibaraki, Japan
6Iwatani Corporation, Tokyo, Japan
Email: hanada@hi-tech.ac.jp
Received April, 2013
ABSTRACT
In order to use effectively renewable energy sources, we propose a new system, called Advanced Superconducting
Power Conditioning System (ASPCS) that is composed of Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES), Fuel
Cell-Electrolyzer (FC-EL), hydrogen storage and DC/DC and DC/AC converters in connection with a liquid hydrogen
station for fuel cell vehicles. The ASPCS compensates the fluctuating electric power of renewable energy sources such
as wind and photovoltaic power generations by means of the SMES having characteristics of quick response and large
Input-Output power, and hydrogen energy with FC-EL having characteristics of moderate response and large storage
capacity. The moderate fluctuated power of the renewable energy is compensated by a trend forecasting method with
the Artificial Neural Network. In case of excess of the power generation by the renewable energy to demand it is con-
verted to hydrogen with EL. In contr ast, sh or tage of the electr ic pow er is made up with FC. The f aster fluctu ation power
that cannot be compensated by the forecasting method is effectively compensated by SMES. In the ASPCS, the SMES
coil with an MgB2 conductor is operated at 20 K by using liquid hydrogen supp lied from a liquid hydrogen tank of the
fuel cell vehicle station. The necessary storage capacity of SMES is estimated as 50 MJ to 100 MJ depending on the
forecasting time for compensating fluctuation power of the rated wind power generation of 5.0 MW. As a safety case, a
thermo-siphon cooling system is used to cool indirectly the MgB2 SMES coil by thermal conduction. In this paper, a
trend forecasting result of output power of a wind power generation and the estimated storage capacity of SMES are
reported.
Keywords: Renewable Energy; Artificial Neural Network; Forecasting; SMES; Liquid Hydrogen; Fuel Cell and
Electrolyzer
1. Introduction
The applications of renewable energy are needed in the
context of climate change and energy resource. But,
when renewable energy generations, such as wind and
photovoltaic power generations, affected by weather
condition are introduced in large quantities, an existing
power system may become unstable. Therefore, we pro-
pose a new system shown in Figure 1, called Advanced
Superconducting Power Conditioning System (ASPCS)
that is composed of Superconducting Magnetic Energy
Storage (SMES), Fuel Cell-Electrolyzer (FC-EL), hy-
drogen storage and DC/DC and DC/AC converters in
connection with a liquid hydrogen station for fuel cell
vehicles [1-3].
AC/DC
DC/DC
DC/DC
FC
DC/DC
DC/AC Utility
Grid
DC/AC ACLoad
DCLoad
DC/DC
カードル
EL
Comp.
LH
2
貯蔵
ディスペンサ
熱交換器
Comp.
Ref.
MgB2
SMES
Vacuum
Chamber
LH2間接冷却
LH2 ローリー
Controller
(含未来予
測技術)
5MWクラス自然エネルギー源
1MWクラスハイブリッド貯蔵システム
商用電力系統
液体水素ステーション
BUS
28 kl
水素系 信号系電気系
CompressedH
2
Dispenser
(Prediction
Technology)
Heat
Exchanger
H
2
Line ElectricSignal
LH
2
Ta nk
LH
2
Ta nk er
LH
2
StationforVehicl e
1MWclassHybridStorageSystem
5MWRenewableEnergyResou rces
UtilityGrid
LH
2
Indirectcooling
Figure 1. Advanced Superconducting Power Conditioning
System.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. EPE
K. HANADA ET AL. 415
The ASPCS compensates the fast fluctuating electric
power of the renewable energy sources by means of the
SMES having characteristics of quick response and large
Input-Output power, and hydrogen energy with FC-EL
having characteristics of moderate response and large
storage capacity. The moderate fluctuated power of the
renewable energy is compensated by a trend forecasting
with the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) [4, 5 ]. In case
of excess of the power generation by the renewable en-
ergy to demand it is converted to hydrogen with EL. In
contrast, in case of shortage the electric power is made
up with FC. The faster fluctuation that cannot be com-
pensated by the forecasting method is effectively com-
pensated by SMES. In the ASPCS, the SMES coil with
an MgB2 conductor is operated at 20 K by using liquid
hydrogen supplied from a liquid hydrogen tank of the
fuel cell vehicle station. The necessary storage capacity
of SMES is estimated as 50 MJ to 100 MJ depending on
the forecasting time for compensating fluctuation of the
rated wind power generation of 5.0 MW. As a safety, a
thermo-siphon cooling system is used to cool indirectly
the MgB2 SMES coil by thermal conduction.
In this paper, a forecasting result of output power of a
wind power generation and the necessary storage capac-
ity of SMES are reported.
2. Artificial Neural Network
ANN is a model of biological neural network, and is
composed of a lot of artificial neurons that collect output
signals through a transfer function of Equation (1) when
they are received input signals.
( )tanh( )
x
x
x
x
ee
fxx ee

(1)
The ANN shown in Figure 2 is a layered ANN. The
layered ANN is formed three layers; an input layer that
receives input signal, an output layer that produces out-
puts signals and a hidden layer that makes processes of
signals.
Weights are set in connection between neurons. The
outputs of each neuron inputs into other neurons after
Inputlayer HiddenlayerOutputlayer
Inputdata
Outputdata
Figure 2. Layered ANN.
they are multiplied by the weights. Sin ce the weights are
usually initialized with random values, they are adjusted
to get desirable outputs. This is a learning process. A
back propagation method that is one of the learning me-
thods of ANN is used in this paper. The ANN can find
relations between input data and the output data easily by
the learning process.
3. K-means Method
A k-means method is one of clustering methods to
perform data classification [6, 7]. And the method classi-
fies given data into k clusters. The step of k-means me-
thod is as follows:
(i) Determine number k of the clusters.
(ii) Assign clusters for the data at random.
(iii) Calculate the center of each cluster with the
assigned da t a .
(iv) Calculate distances between the data and the
cluster-centered, and assign the data to the nearest cluster
again.
(v) When the allotment of all data into th e clusters
does not change by the process mentioned above, the
calculation is over. Otherwise, the above process is re-
peated after the cluster centers are recalculated from
newly assigned clusters.
4. Simulation
4.1. Output Power Forecasting
In this study, a wind power generation of rated output 5
MW having time series data of the output power shown
in Figure 3 is used. The future trend output is forecasted
for 50 seconds needed for control of FC-EL by the ANN
model shown in F igure 4.
Let the output power time series of the wind power be
{x1, x2, …, xn}. The ANN learns relation between xt,
xt-10, …, xt -60 that are the output power at present time t to
60 seconds before and xt+50 that is the output power at 50
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
020000 40000 60000 80000
Output power[%]
time[sec]
Figure 3. Output power of a wind pow er generation.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. EPE
K. HANADA ET AL.
416
seconds from the present time, and forecasts output pow-
er 50 seconds in future. The forecasting result by the
ANN is shown in Figures 5, 6 and Ta ble 1. Table 1 in-
cludes the result of moving average that is calculated by
xt = (xt-10+ xt-20+ xt-30+ xt-40+ xt-50)/6 to compare with the
result by the ANN. The ANN can forecast the output
power of the wind power generation at 50 seconds in
future, and it is shown that the resu lt of the ANN is b etter
than that of the moving av erage.
4.2. The Necessary Storage Capacity of SMES
When FC-EL is operated based on the forecast men-
tioned above, charging or discharging power by SMES
compensates the difference between actual output power
and the forecasted output power as shown in Figure 7.
The required storage capacity of SMES shown in Table
2 is determined by alternately charging or discharging
power. In addition, distribution of the charging or dis-
charging power by SMES is shown in Figures 8 and 9.
From the above result, the storage capacity of SMES
using the ANN is smaller than that using moving aver-
age.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, the output power of the wind power gen-
eration is forecasted for ASPCS that is composed wind
x
t
x
t-10
x
t-60
x
t+50
Figure 4. The ANN forecasting output power of a wind
power generation.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
010000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000
Outputpower[%]
time[sec]
Actualou tput powerl Forecastedoutputpower
Figure 5. Forecasting result of output power of a wind
power generation by ANN.
25
30
35
40
10000 10100 10200 10300 10400 10500 10600 10700 10800 10900 11000
Outputpower[%]
time[sec]
Actualoutputpower
Forecastedoutputpower(ANN)
Forecastedoutputpower(movingaverage)
Figure 6. Forecasting result of output power of a wind
power generation by ANN (between 10000 and 11000 sec-
onds).
Table 1. Forecasting result of output pow er of a wind power
generation.
Forecasting method ANN Moving average
Average error [MW] 0.028 –0.001
Distribution [(MW)2] 0.025 0.028
Maximum absolute error [MW] 0.685 0.725
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Charge/dischargepowerofSMES[MW]
Figure 7. Charge/discharge power of SMES.
Table 2. Storage capacity of SMES.
Forecasting method ANN Moving average
Maximum charge capacity[MJ] 72.0 73.5
Maximum discharge capacity[MJ] 61.8 83.4
Average[MJ] 1.45
0.05
Absolute average[MJ] 6.47 7.83
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. EPE
K. HANADA ET AL.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. EPE
417
power generation, SMES and FC-EL and supplies
smoothed power from this system. As a result, the ANN
has better accuracy than the moving average method and
is able to forecast the output power, and the required sto-
rage capacity of SMES is smaller. In the future study, we
optimize structure of th e ANN and improve the selection
method of learnin g dat a .
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
100 50050 100
frequency[%]
charge/dischargepowerofSMES[MJ]
6. Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the Advanced Low Carbon
Reduction Technology R&D of Japan Science and
Technol o gy Agency.
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Figure 8. Distribution of charging/discharging energy of
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Figure 9. Distribution of charging/discharging energy of
SMES (moving average).