Time series models to simulate and forecast hourly averaged wind speed in Quetta, Pakistan

Stochastic simulation and forecast models of hourly average wind speeds are presented. Time series models take into account several basic features of wind speed data including autocorrelation, non-Gaussian distribution and diurnal nonstationarity. The positive correlation between consecutive wind speed observations is taken into account by fitting an ARMA (p,q) process to wind speed data transformed to make their distribution approximately Gaussian and standardized to remove scattering of transformed data. Diurnal variations have been taken into account to observe forecasts and its dependence on lead times. We find the ARMA (p,q) model suitable for prediction intervals and probability forecasts. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.