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An analog-based ensemble model output statistics (EMOS) is proposed to improve EMOS for the calibration of ensemble forecasts. Given a set of analog predictors and corresponding weights, which are optimized with a brute-force continuous ranked probability score (CRPS) minimization, forecasts similar to a current ensemble forecast (i.e., analogs) are searched. The best analogs and the corresponding observations form the training dataset for estimating the EMOS coefficients. To test the new approach for renewable energy applications, wind speed measurements at 100-m height from six measurement towers and wind ensemble forecasts at 100-m height from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Ensemble Prediction System (EPS) are used. The analog-based EMOS is compared against EMOS, an adaptive and recursive wind vector calibration (AUV), and an analog ensemble applied to ECMWF EPS. It is shown that the analog-based EMOS outperforms EMOS, AUV, and the analog ensemble at all measurement sites in terms of CRPS and Brier score for common and rare events. The CRPS improvements relative to EMOS reach up to 11% and are statistically significant at almost all sites. The reliability of the analog-based EMOS ensemble for rare events is better compared to EMOS and AUV and is similar compared to the analog ensemble.

Ensemble forecasts are a valuable addition to deterministic wind forecasts since they allow the quantification of forecast uncertainties. To remove common deficiencies of ensemble forecasts such as biases and ensemble spread deficits, various postprocessing methods for the calibration of wind speed (univariate calibration) and wind vector (bivariate calibration) ensemble forecasts have been developed in recent years. The objective of this paper is to compare the performance of state-of-the-art calibration methods at distinct offand onshore sites in central Europe. The aim is to identify calibration-and site-dependent improvements in forecast skill over uncalibrated 100-m ensemble forecasts from the ECMWF Ensemble Prediction System. The ensemble forecasts were evaluated at four onshore and three offshore measurement towers in central Europe at 100-m height for lead times up to 5 days. The results show that the recursive and adaptive wind vector calibration (AUV) outperforms calibration methods such as univariate ensemble model output statistics (EMOS), bivariate EMOS, variance deficit calibration, and ensemble copula coupling in terms of the root-mean-square error and continuous ranked probability score at almost all sites. It was found that exponential downweighting of past measurements in AUV contributes to higher forecast skill since similar downweighting approaches in the other calibration methods improved forecast skill. Proposing a bidimensional bias correction in bivariate EMOS similar to the approach taken in AUV yields bivariate EMOS skill at onshore sites that is similar to AUV skill. Deterministic and probabilistic improvements are usually much lower at offshore sites and increase with increasing complexity of the site characteristics since systematic forecast errors and ensemble underdispersion are larger at high-roughness sites.

Abstract. Usually, neural networks trained on historical feed-in time series of wind turbines deterministically predict power output over the next hours to days. Here, the training goal is to minimise a scalar cost function, often the root mean square error (RMSE) between network output and target values. Yet similar to the analog ensemble (AnEn) method, the training algorithm can also be adapted to analyse the uncertainty of the power output from the spread of possible targets found in the historical data for a certain meteorological situation. In this study, the uncertainty estimate is achieved by discretising the continuous time series of power targets into several bins (classes). For each forecast horizon, a neural network then predicts the probability of power output falling into each of the bins, resulting in an empirical probability distribution. Similiar to the AnEn method, the proposed method avoids the use of costly numerical weather prediction (NWP) ensemble runs, although a selection of several deterministic NWP forecasts as input is helpful. Using state-of-the-art deep learning technology, we applied our method to a large region and a single wind farm. MAE scores of the 50-percentile were on par with or better than comparable deterministic forecasts. The corresponding Continuous Ranked Probability Score (CRPS) was even lower. Future work will investigate the overdispersiveness sometimes observed, and extend the method to solar power forecasts.

The objective of this paper is to compare probabilistic 100-m wind speed forecasts, which are relevant for wind energy applications, from different regional and global ensemble prediction systems (EPSs) at six measurement towers in central Europe and to evaluate the benefits of combining single-model ensembles into multimodel ensembles. The global 51-member EPS from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF EPS) is compared against the Consortium for Small-Scale Modelling’s (COSMO) limited-area 16-member EPS (COSMO-LEPS) and a regional, high-resolution 20-member EPS centered over Germany (COSMO-DE EPS). The ensemble forecasts are calibrated with univariate (wind speed) ensemble model output statistics (EMOS) and bivariate (wind vector) recursive and adaptive calibration (AUV). The multimodel ensembles are constructed by pooling together raw or best-calibrated ensemble forecasts. An additional postprocessing of these multimodel ensembles with both EMOS and AUV is also tested. The best-performing calibration methodology for ECMWF EPS is AUV, while EMOS performs better than AUV for the calibration of COSMO-DE EPS. COSMO-LEPS has similar skill when calibrated with both EMOS and AUV. The AUV ECMWF EPS outperforms the EMOS COSMO-LEPS and COSMO-DE EPS for deterministic and probabilistic wind speed forecast skill. For most thresholds, ECMWF EPS has a comparable reliability and sharpness but higher discrimination ability. Multimodel ensembles, which are constructed by pooling together the best-calibrated EPSs, improve the skill relative to the AUV ECMWF EPS. An analysis of the error correlation among the EPSs indicates that multimodel ensemble skill can be considerably higher when the error correlation is low.