First and second order semi-Markov chains for wind speed modeling

The increasing interest in renewable energy, particularly in wind, has given rise to the necessity of accurate models for the generation of good synthetic wind speed data. Markov chains are often used for this purpose but better models are needed to reproduce the statistical properties of wind speed data. We downloaded a database, freely available from the web, in which are included wind speed data taken from L.S.I. -Lastem station (Italy) and sampled every 10 min. With the aim of reproducing the statistical properties of this data we propose the use of three semi-Markov models. We generate synthetic time series for wind speed by means of Monte Carlo simulations. The time lagged autocorrelation is then used to compare statistical properties of the proposed models with those of real data and also with a synthetic time series generated through a simple Markov chain. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.