As fossil fuel is being depleted, the percentage of wind power capacity in total electricity generation is increasing. In order to improve the absorption capacity of wind power, wind power prediction has been introduced. Aiming at the disadvantage of low prediction accuracy and unstable model of traditional extreme learning machine (ELM), a kernel extreme learning machine based on differential evolution (DE) and cross validation optimization method is proposed to predict short-term wind power generation. Firstly, the average mean square error (MSE) verified by k folding and cross validation is adopted as the error function of the model to improve the stability and generalization performance of the model. Secondly, differential evolution algorithm is used to optimize the regularization coefficient and kernel width of the kernel extreme learning machine with cross validation and improve the precision of model is 8.34%. Finally, compared with the application of extreme learning machine with genetic algorithm and cross validation to a wind farm prediction case in northwest China, the experimental results show that the convergence rate of this method is twice that of genetic algorithm (GA) optimization algorithm, and the accuracy is higher.INDEX TERMS Differential evolutionary algorithm, Kernel extreme learning machine, k fold cross validation, wind power prediction.