Effects of Temporal Wind Patterns on the Value of Wind-Generated Electricity in California and the Northwest

Wind power production is variable, but also has diurnal and seasonal patterns. These patterns differ between sites, potentially making electric power from some wind sites more valuable for meeting customer loads or selling in wholesale power markets. This paper investigates whether the timing of wind significantly affects the value of electricity from sites in California and the Northwestern United States. We use both measured and modeled wind data and estimate the time-varying value of wind power with both financial and load-based metrics. We find that the potential difference in wholesale market value between better-correlated and poorly correlated wind sites is modest, on the order of 5%–10%. A load-based metric, power production during the top 10% of peak load hours, varies more strongly between sites, suggesting that the capacity value of different wind projects could vary by as much as 50% based on the timing of wind alone.