How do Humans decide under Wind Power Forecast Uncertainty — an IEA Wind Task 36 Probabilistic Forecast Games and Experiments initiative

The need to take into account and explicitly model forecast uncertainty is today at the heart of many scientific and applied enterprises. For instance, the ever-increasing accuracy of weather forecasts has been driven by the development of ensemble forecasts, where a large number of forecasts are generated either by generating forecasts from different models or by repeatedly perturbing the initial conditions of a single forecast model.

Importantly, this approach provides robust estimates of forecast uncertainty, which supports human judgement and decision-making. Although weather forecasts and their uncertainty are also crucial for the weather-to-power conversion for RES forecasting in system operation, power trading and balancing, the industry has been reluctant to adopt ensemble methods and other new technologies that can help manage highly variable and uncertain power feed-ins, especially under extreme weather conditions.

In order to support the energy industry in the adaptation of uncertainty forecasts into their business practices, the IEA Wind Task 36 has started an initiative in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Hans-Ertel Center for Weather Research to investigate the existing barriers in the industry to the adoption of such forecasts into decision processes.

In the first part of the initiative, a forecast game was designed as a demonstration of a typical decision-making task in the power industry. The game was introduced in an IEA Wind Task 36 workshop and thereafter released to the public. When closed, it had been played by 120 participants. We will discuss the results of our first experience with the experiment and introduce some new features of the second generation of experiments as a continuation of the initiative.

We will also discuss specific questions that emerged when we started and after analysing the experiments. Lastly we will discuss the trends we found and how we will fit these into the overall objective of the initiative which is to provide training tools to demonstrate the use and benefit of uncertainty forecasts by simulating decision scenarios with feedback and allowing people to learn from experience, rather than reading articles, how to use such forecasts.