In Chapter 11 of the book, we derive the distribution of wind speeds and show what role the concept of maximum entropy plays into the formulation. It’s a simple derivation and one that can be extended by layering more dispersion on the variability, in effect superposing more uncertainty on the Rayleigh or Weibull distribution that is typically used to quantify wind speed distribution. This is often referred to as superstatistics, first described by Beck, C., & Cohen, E. (2003) in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and Its Applications, 322, 267–275.

A recent article uploaded to arXiv [1] gives an alternate treatment to the one we described. This follows Beck’s original approach more than our simplified formulation but each is an important contribution to understanding and applying the math of wind variability. The introduction to their article is valuable in providing a rationale for doing the analysis.

“Mitigating climate change demands a transition towards renewable electricity generation, with wind power being a particularly promising technology. Long periods either of high or of low wind therefore essentially define the necessary amount of storage to balance the power system. While the general statistics of wind velocities have been studied extensively, persistence (waiting) time statistics of wind is far from well understood. Here, we investigate the statistics of both high- and low-wind persistence. We find heavy tails and explain them as a superposition of different wind conditions, requiring q-exponential distributions instead of exponential distributions. Persistent wind conditions are not necessarily caused by stationary atmospheric circulation patterns nor by recurring individual weather types but may emerge as a combination of multiple weather types and circulation patterns. Understanding wind persistence statistically and synoptically, may help to ensure a reliable and economically feasible future energy system, which uses a high share of wind generation. “

[1]Weber, J. et al. “Wind Power Persistence is Governed by Superstatistics”. arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.06391 (2019).