Journal of Coastal Research SI 93 623–632 Coconut Creek, Florida 2019

Deep-learning-based Wind Speed Forecasting Considering

Spatial–temporal Correlations with Adjacent Wind Turbines
Xiaoyu Shi, Shengzhi Huang*, Qiang Huang, Xuewen Lei, Jiangfeng Li, Pei Li, and Mingyang Yang

State Key Laboratory of Eco-hydraulics in Northwest Arid Region

Xi’an University of Technology
Xi’an 710048, China www.cerf-jcr.org

ABSTRACT

Shi, X.; Huang, S.; Huang, Q.; Lei, X.; Li, J.; Li, P., and Yang, M., 2019. Deep-learning-based wind
speed forecasting considering spatial–temporal correlations with the adjacent wind turbines. In: Guido-
Aldana, P.A. and Mulahasan, S. (eds.), Advances in Water Resources and Exploration. Journal of Coastal
Research, Special Issue No. 93, pp. 623-632. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.

www.JCRonline.org The accurate prediction of wind speed, which greatly influences the secure and efficient application of wind
energy, is still an important issue and a huge challenge. Previous research has largely focused on advanced
algorithms, often ignoring the contribution of expanding predictors to predict wind speed. In order to promote
the accuracy of forecasting, this study proposes a provisory wind speed forecasting model based on spatial-
temporal correlation (SC) theory, in which the target and adjacent wind turbines, as well as the related time-
lag characteristics, are examined through Wavelet Coherence Transformation analysis (WCT). Prior to that,
the continuous wavelet transforms (CWT) are used to detect the spatial–temporal correlations with adjacent
wind turbines. The CWT results show that the adjacent wind turbines which have a strong correlation with the
target wind turbine are adopted as important factors of the forecasting model. Moreover, the study focuses on
long short term memory (LSTM), a typical deep learning model from the family of deep neural networks, and
compares its forecast accuracy to traditional methods with a proven track record of wind speed forecasting.
Wind speed series of these model tests are taken from a Buckley City wind farm in Washington State, USA.
The results of testing set reveal that (1) the root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and
mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of the proposed model (SC-LSTM) are 0.49 m/s, 0.28 m/s and 2.57%,
respectively, which are much lower than those of the conventional Back Propagation (BP) model, Extreme
Learning Machines (ELM) model, and Support Vector Machine (SVM) model; (2) the proposed model that
considers spatial–temporal correlations with adjacent wind turbines based on the WCT can obtain reliable and
excellent prediction results, providing an excellent hybrid model for wind speed forecasts.

ADDITIONAL INDEX WORDS: Wind speed prediction, spatial-temporal correlation, wavelet coherence
transformation analysis, long short term memory.

INTRODUCTION
With the evolution of global energy patterns and the adjustment
of national energy strategies, renewable energy sources have
been undergoing key development in various countries all over
the world (Ak et al., 2018; Jiang and Huang, 2017). However,
because wind speed has the features of randomness, volatility, and
intermittentness, and its data series are irregular and changeable,
it is regarded as the hardest weather factor to predict (Boehme,
Wallace, and Harrison, 2007; Guo, Gao, and Wu, 2017). Enriching
input factors of highly spatial–temporal correlations and using
highly correlated prediction factors with excellent algorithms can
guarantee the regular working of power networks, thus making
accurate predictions possible (Meng, Huang, and Huang, 2018).
Although with difficulty, lots of researchers have devoted their
efforts to inventing a new model. Divided by the length of time,
that is shorter term, short term, medium term, and long term, wind
DOI: 10.2112/SI93-084.1 received 27 September 2018; accepted in
revision 6 April 2019.
*Corresponding author: huangshengzhi7788@126.com
©
Coastal Education and Research Foundation, Inc. 2019
speed forecasting (WSF) has four types, which are the statistical
method, machine learning method, physical method, and
bootstrap method (Ma et al., 2015; Qu et al., 2016; Tascikaraoglu
and Uzunoglu, 2014). The first two are fit for shorter to short term
forecasting (Huang et al., 2014a). Stochastic methods have also
been proven to perform well, especially in long-term predictions
(Fang et al., 2018; Fang et al., 2019a; Koutsoyiannis et al., 2018).
It is estimated that the observation data at the next time point will
be close to the current value. Additionally, it is highly important
for wind speed forecasting to use numerical weather prediction
(NWP) models in physical models. The bootstrap methods (also
called analogue, deterministic, or chaotic) entirely depend on the
available data, without using any model parameters (Dimitriadis,
Koutsoyiannis, and Tzouka, 2016).
The statistical method mainly depends on a huge amount of
previous data and constructs non-leaner relations among the
different explanatory variables. These methods always contain the
moving-average model (MA), auto-regressive integrated moving-
average model (ARIMA), quantile-regression model (QR),
Kalman-filter model and stochastic models (Fang et al., 2018).
Except for the ARIMA statistical methods, stochastic models have
624 Shi et al.
recently been proposed for the surface wind speed (Koutsoyiannis
et al., 2018). Different from statistical methods, physical methods
mainly focus on depicting the physical process of wind speed.
Based on physical models, wind speed can be predicted through
numerical weather, which in turn relies on multiple parameters.
These multiple parameters are related in numerical weather
prediction (NWP). However, the majority of wind farms are
located in the sparsely populated regions, so the variety of data
can be not easily obtained (Wang et al., 2017).
Statistical and machine learning extract laws of historical
data can provide more precise results for short-term wind speed
forecasting than the physics method. Due to the application of
high-dimensional nonlinear relations in curve fitting, machine
leaning methods now have extensive applications. In comparison,
when dealing with high-dimensional, complex, and nonlinear
problems, shallow neural networks (SNN) exhibit a series of
disadvantages, such as slow convergence, over-fitting, and easily
falling into local optima (Wang et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2016).
Researchers have discovered that deep neural network (DNN)
mainly include convolutional neural network (CNN), deep belief
network (DBN) and recurrent neural network (RNN) (Wu et al.,
2016; Wu, Yin, and Liu, 2017). Due to the internal structure of
DNN, it can be introduced to depict complex nonlinear relations.
Furthermore, the deep learning methods are not widely used in wind
forecasting. RNN was introduced for dynamic object recognition
at first. Different from traditional shallow neural network models,
deep learning models can depict the inherent characters of the data
(Deepak, Zhang, and Huang, 2017). According to the following
research, deep learning methods perform better. A long short-term
memory (LSTM) network derived from RNN can overcome the
vanishing and explosion of the gradient during model training
(Byung-Hwa, Se-Young, and Ig-Jae, 2017). Therefore, it can
make efficient use of the characteristic information of training
data during the process of forecasting.
Apart from the prediction algorithms, the forecasting accuracy
is presented based on variable factors (Kinsela et al., 2016; Mi
et al., 2015; Yu et al., 2019). In order to approach the actual
situation, the amount of data that must be searched has an
unparalleled scale, and information is collected and decision
making is made on the basis of data mining in WSF. Generally,
data correlation analysis mainly includes Pearson’s correlation
analysis and regression analysis has been widely used in WSF
(James and John, 1999; Jiang, 1999). Hence, this study introduces
wavelet coherence transformation analysis (WCT) for depicting
the change in characteristics and coupled oscillations between the
target and adjacent wind turbines (Peng et al., 2018). By taking
the spatial correlation of wind speed and the related time-lag
properties into account, the data of the target wind turbine was
accurately predicted using the deep-learning-based method.
The structure of this paper is as follows. Study Area and Data
describes the study region, which includes five wind turbines; the
methods and materials are shown in Method and Materials; the
structure of the proposed model is given in The Hybrid SC-LSTM
Model. Results provides the experimental results; and finally,
Discussions and Conclusions concludes this paper.
STUDY AREA AND DATA
Wind speed data provided by the U.S. National Renewable
Energy Laboratory were used in this study. As can be seen in Figure
1, the wind farm is located at Buckley City, Washington State,
Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 93, 2019
Figure 1. Overview of the wind farm and the location of target and
adjacent wind turbines.
America. The wind farm includes five wind turbines, in which the
No. 3 wind turbine is set as the target wind turbine and the rest of
the wind turbines (No. 1, No. 2, No. 4, and No. 5) are set as the
adjacent wind turbines in this study. The data were collected from
the 6th November 2010-13th December 2010, during which the
point was set as 5 minutes and 10656 sets of data were collected.
Specifically, the data from the 1st- 8640th (30 days), 8641st-
9216th (2 days), and 9217st-10656th (5 days) observations were
adopted as the training, validation, and testing series, respectively.
METHOD AND MATERIALS
Wavelet Coherence Transformation Analysis (WCT)
Wavelet coherence transformation analysis is a new method
which combines the wavelet power spectrum and cross-spectrum
(Guo et al., 2019a, b; Han et al., 2019). The WCT can effectively
analyze the correlation degree between two non-stationary
time series and reveal the phase relationship between them in a
specific time scale and frequency domain (Huang et al., 2014a;
Liu, Huang, and Xie, 2019; Liu et al., 2019). Hence, it can reveal
the cross-correlation between time series more fully and deeply
than traditional Pearson’s correlation analysis and regression
analysis (Huang et al., 2017; Huang, Wang, and Huang, 2019).
In this study, the comprehensive correlations between wind speed
series of target and adjacent wind turbines in temporal and spatial
dimensions were fully examined based on the WCT analysis.
WCT combines the wavelet transform theory with cross spectrum
analysis, which may effectively depict the typical characteristics
of wind speed sets in both frequency and time fields (Fang et al.,
2019b, c; Wen, Fang, and Zhang, 2013). Hudgins, Friehe, and
Mayer (1993) proposed the wavelet coherence transformation
(WCT) analysis for searching the relations between two
associated time series, and also as a novel method for the analysis
of spatial–temporal correlations between the target and adjacent
wind turbines.
W xy represents the wavelet power spectrum. xn and yn ,
which denote the crosswavelet transforms, can be expressed as
W xy =W xW y . Specifically, ∗ describes the complex conjugation
of xn and yn . The phase angle of W xy can be used for describing
the local phase relation between xn and yn , within the influence
cone. The theoretical distribution of the wavelet power spectrum
is expressed as follows (Huang et al., 2016; Wen, Fang, and
Zhang, 2013):
 Wnx ( s )Wny ∗ ( s )  Z ( P)
D = v Pkx Pky (1)
 σ xσ y  v 
 
 Deep-learning-based Wind Speed Forecasting Considering Spatial–temporal Correlations with Adjacent Wind Turbines625

where Pkx and Pky denote the power spectra of the wind speed
series, Wny g( s ) denotes the complex conjugation of Wnx ( s ) ;
s denotes the time lag, the standard deviations of xn and yn
can be represented as σ x and σ y , respectively; the confidence
coefficient related to the probability can be described as Z v ( P )
(Wen, Fang, and Zhang, 2013).
Long Short-Term Memory Network (LSTM)
The wind speed of the target wind turbine can be effectively
predicted by extracting the characteristic information of adjacent
wind turbines based on mapping the linkages between target
and adjacent wind turbines. Expanding predictors are useful for
improving the precision and stability of forecast results. In recent
years, LSTM has gradually been applied in forecasting research,
because of its powerful computing power and ability of data
acquisition. LSTM has introduced forecasting the wind speed of
target wind turbines on the basis of adjacent wind turbines.
LSTM is a type of DNN algorithm, which includes an input
layer, hidden layer, and output layer (Sepp and Jürgen, 1997). It
is noted that the special structure of neurons successfully solves
the typical and traditional defect-gradient uncertainty problem
of the traditional loop neural network during the model training.
Moreover, its special structure forms three gates and a memory
cell to remember information in the hidden neuron (Shi et al.,
2018).
LSTM neural network architecture
The bi-directional recurrent neural network (BRNN) derives
from the directional neural network structure (forward neural
networks and backward neural networks). Hence, the output
that is achieved depends on the hidden layers. Figure 2 shows
the architecture of LSTM and presents the special hidden unit of
LSTM.
The special structure of LSTM neurons successfully has been
used to solve the defect-gradient uncertainty problem. According
to the description above, the function of the forget gate of LSTM
is to reset the memory cell. Apart from that, the input gate function
is to modify the memory cell state of the input. Furthermore,
the output gate obstructs or permits the memory cell state from
influencing other neurons. The input, forget and output gate can
be described as i, f, and o, respectively. The memory cell state
and the new memory cell gate can be represented as c and c ,
respectively. The equations can be described as follows:
i= σ (ωi ∗ xt + U i ∗ st −1 + Vi o ct −1 + bi ) (2)
t

f t σ g (ω f ∗ xt + U f ∗ st −1 + V fo ct −1 + b f ) (3)
=
ot σ g (ωo ∗ xt + U o ∗ st −1 + Voo ct −1 + bo )
= (4)

=ct f t o ct −1 + ito ct (5)
ct =σ c (Wc ∗ xt + U c ∗ st −1 + bc ) (6)
st = ot°σ h (ct )  (7)
where the input vector can be described as xt ; weights and bias
can be represented as W, U, V, and b; ° denotes the scalar product
of vectors, the sigmoid function can be described as σ g ; the
hyperbolic tangent function can be written as σ h and σ c .

Evolution Metrics
Neuron units structure of LSTM In order to identify the SC-LSTM model, the correlation
coefficient R, mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error
(RMSE), and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) are selected
for the evaluation metrics as follows (Huang et al., 2014b; Ren et
al., 2019):
Cov(V obs ,V pre )
（V obs ,V pre ) =
R  (8)
Var[V obs ]Var[V pre ]

ht 1
∑
N
=MAE V obs − Vt pre (9)
Ct-1 Ct N t =1 t 
× +

tanh
1
∑ (Vt obs − Vt pre )2 
N
ft it ot RMSE
= (10)
× × N t =1
ict
σ σ tanh σ
obs
ht-1 ht 1 N Vt − Vt pre
MAPE =
N
∑ t =1
Vt obs
 (11)
forget gate input gate output gate
xt
where the observed value can be written as Vt obs , the predicted
value can be described as Vt pre , and N denotes the number of data.

THE HYBRID SC-LSTM MODEL

Deep learning and computer parallel computing technology
have been widely used in the last years. Because of its special
Figure 2. Illustration of the architectures of LSTM and its special neurons. network structure, the LSTM neural network was introduced

Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 93, 2019

626 Shi et al.
X1(t)
X1'(t)
X2(t)
X2'(t)
CWT LSTM
...
...
Xn-1(t)
Xm'(t)
Xn(t)
Evaluation of prediction
results
Figure 3. The flowchart of the proposed model.
in wind speed prediction. The LSTM neural network model for
short-term wind speed prediction has been applied in this study.
Moreover, considering that the spatial–temporal correlation with
the adjacent wind turbines is relatively weak in this study, mainly
due to the previous traditional correlation analysis, it can only
reflect the instantaneous correlation of sequences.
In this study, the deep-learning-based model considering the
spatial–temporal correlation can be written as:
t
vobj t −k
= f (Vobj ,V1t − k ,V2t − k ,...,Vi t − k ) 
where vobjt
denotes the predicted data of target wind turbines at
moment t, f ( ) represents the complex mapping relation, which
ranges between the historical data of target and adjacent wind
turbines and determines the prediction precision of validation
periods; Vi t − k represents the historical data at the t-k moment of
the i-th adjacent wind turbines ( i ≤ m , where m is the number of
wind turbines in this study, and k denotes the predicted horizon,
k=1). Selection of the historical data of i -th adjacent wind
turbines as the hybrid model input is based on WCT.
In view of the strong uncertainty and noise in the wind speed
historical data, it is difficult to directly determine the value
of f in Equation (12). Hence, according to the mechanism of
the mathematical model mentioned above, the LSTM hybrid
forecasting model is proposed in this study, which combines
WCT and deep learning. The flowchart of the SC-LSTM model is
depicted in Figure 3. The hybrid structure of the SC-LSTM model
contains the four steps:
Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 93, 2019
Input the samples in the training,
validation and testing sets
Determine model parameters, number
of hidden layers and iterations
Train network
Update model parameters
Reach the number of iterations or No
satisfying the condition
Yes
Input the samples in the testing sets
Output prediction
results
Step 1: Analyze the spatial correlation between the target wind
turbine and the adjacent wind turbines using wavelet coherence
transformation analysis (WCT), and select the adjacent turbines
with a significant correlation and time-lag characteristics as the
samples;
Step 2: Collect the sample set and divide it into training,
validation, and testing;
Step 3: Optimize the parameters in the LSTM model through
training as the detailed process shows in Long Short-Term
(12) Memory Network (LSTM);
Step 4: Substitute the samples of the test set into the well-
trained LSTM model and output the prediction results.
RESULTS
The Spatial-temporal Correlations between the Target and
Adjacent Wind Turbines
The wavelet coherence transformation analysis is employed
for identifying the spatial–temporal correlations between the
target and adjacent wind turbines on the wind farm, and the cross
wavelet transforms between No. 3 and No. 1, No. 2, No. 4, No.
5 wind turbine series are displayed in Figure 4(a), Figure 4(b),
Figure 4(c), and Figure 4(d), respectively. The 5% confidence
level against red noise is described as a thick contour, and the
arrows represent the relative phase relationship.
From Figure 4(a), it can be seen that No. 1 wind turbine shows
a strong spatial correlation on the No. 3 target wind turbine,
indicating that the historical data of No. 1 wind turbines can be
the input for forecasting the wind speed of the target wind turbine.
 Deep-learning-based Wind Speed Forecasting Considering Spatial–temporal Correlations with Adjacent Wind Turbines627

64 64
32 32
4 4
16 16
8 8 8 8
4 4
16 16
Period / 5min

Period / 5min
2 2

32 1 32 1

1/2 1/2
64 1/4 64 1/4

1/8 1/8
128 128
1/16 1/16

256 1/32 256 1/32

1/64 1/64
200 400 600 800 1000 200 400 600 800 1000
Time Time
(a)
(a) (b)
(b)
64
64
32
4 4 32
16
16
8 8 8
8
4
4
16 16
Period / 5min

Period / 5min
2

32 1 1
32
1/2 1/2
64 1/4 64 1/4

1/8 1/8
128 128 1/16
1/16
1/32
256 1/32 256
1/64
1/64
200 400 600 800 1000 200 400 600 800 1000
Time Time
(c)
(c) (d) (d)

Figure 4. The spatial-temporal correlations between target and adjacent wind turbines ((a) NO. 3 & NO. 1; (b) NO. 3 & NO. 2; (c) NO. 3 & NO. 4; (d)
NO. 3 & NO. 5).

Specifically, No. 3 and No. 1 were significantly spatially correlated
on a time scale of 64-128 (5 min) and exhibited identical phase
changes, and the spectra passed the significance test, suggesting
that these two wind turbines had stable periods of approximately
6-12 hours. Specifically, Figure 4(c) shows that the spectra of No.
3 and No. 4 were significantly correlated on a time scale of 32-
80 (5 min), which passed the significance test, and have stable
periods of approximately 3-7 hours. The results of No. 5 are
similar to No. 4. Moreover, the spectra in the high-energy spectra
of No. 2 and No. 3 did not pass the significance test and exhibited
a weak correlation. Hence, the historical data of No. 1, 4, and
5 were input to train the established prediction model from The
Hybrid SC-LSTM Model.
Input and Output
The data were obtained from 6th November 2010-13th
December 2010, during which the point was set as 5 minutes
and 10656 sets of data in total were collected. Specifically, the
data from the 1st- 8640th (30 days), 8641st-9216th (2 days) and
output framework. Detailed information of the entire dataset of
the target wind turbine used in this study is shown in Figure 5.
Parameter Settings
In this study, the back propagation (BP), extreme learning
machines (ELM) and support vector machine (SVM) are utilized
to make the comparison of the SC-LSTM model. Finding better
parameters of LSTM can effectively improve the accuracy of the
hybrid model. The parameters mainly include the initial weights,
learning rate, activation function, network topography, batches,
and the number of iterations. Specifically, the initial weight was
30
Training Validation Testing
25
20
Wind speed
(m/s)

9217st-10656th (5 days) actual data were classified as the training, 15

validation, and testing series, respectively.
10
Considering that the historical data at a time-lag over four hours
imposed slight effects on the prediction of wind speed and were
5
very likely to affect the prediction precision, the wind data of the
adjacent and target wind turbines collected in the first four hours 0
(with a time step of 5 minutes and 48 sets of data in total) were 1 1001 2001 3001 4001 5001 6001 7001 8001 9001 10001
input to the established model, while the wind speed data of the Data
No. 3 wind turbine at the next moment formed the output. All
Figure 5. Wind series of the target wind turbine.
forecasting models used for the comparison have the same input-

Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 93, 2019

628 Shi et al.

BP
Training sample distribution Elman
Training sample distribution SVM
Training sample distribution
30
SC-LSTM
Training sample distribution
30 30 30
Actual
Actual Actual Actual
SC LSTM Predicted
BP Predicted Elman Predicted SVM Predicted 25
25 25 25
Training

20
20 20 20

wind speed(m/s)
wind speed(m/s)
wind speed(m/s)
wind speed(m/s)

15
15 15 15

10
10 10 10

5
5 5 5

0
0 0
0

-5
-5 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000
-5 -5 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 time(5min)
time(5min)
time(5min) time(5min)
Validating sample distribution
Validating sample distribution Validating sample distribution
Validating sample distribution 30
30 30
30 Actual
Actual Actual
Actual SC LSTM Predicted
BP Predicted SVM Predicted 25
25 Elman Predicted 25
25

20
Validation

20 20
20

wind speed(m/s)
wind speed(m/s)
wind speed(m/s)

15
wind speed(m/s)

15 15
15

10
10 10 10

5
5 5 5

0
0 0 0

-5
-5 -5 -5 0 100 200 300 400 500 600
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 100 200 300 400 500 600
time(5min)
time(5min) time(5min) time(5min)
Testing sample distribution Testing sample distribution Testing sample distribution Testing sample distribution
30 30 30 30
Actual Actual Actual Actual
BP Predicted Elman Predicted SVM Predicted SC LSTM Predicted
25 25 25
25

20 20 20
Testing

20
wind speed(m/s)

wind speed(m/s)
wind speed(m/s)

wind speed(m/s)

15 15 15
15

10 10 10

10
5 5 5

5
0 0 0

-5 -5 0 -5
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
time(5min) time(5min) time(5min) time(5min)

Figure 6. Prediction results of forecasting models by BP, Elman, SVM and SC-LSTM model.

Table 1. Forecast performance of forecasting models.

RMSE (m/s) MAE (m/s) MAPE (%)

Model
Train Valid Test Train Valid Test Train Valid Test

BP 2.28 3.77 3.46 1.61 2.94 2.63 76.18 59.29 29.97

ELMAN 0.81 2.03 1.87 0.51 1.36 1.25 18.02 27.24 11.73

SVM 0.18 0.84 2.21 0.13 0.58 1.05 7.36 10.9 6.51

SC-LSTM 0.19 0.49 0.49 0.10 0.26 0.28 3.42 6.07 2.57

Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 93, 2019

 Deep-learning-based Wind Speed Forecasting Considering Spatial–temporal Correlations with Adjacent Wind Turbines629

determined based on past experience, and the sigmoid, tanh, quite high prediction precision in training, the model still suffered
and softmax functions were used as the activation functions. from over-fitting and therefore the prediction performance was
Specifically, the number of batches was set to 10, while the degraded.
number of iterations ranged from 100 to 300.
Comparisons Results
Analysis of the Hybrid Model To further investigate the proposed model, considering the
To evaluate the performance of the SC-LSTM model, the BP spatial–temporal correlation with the adjacent wind turbines,
model, the ELM model and the SVM model were employed for the LSTM model was adopted to make the target wind turbines
comparion. The evaluation indexes of these models are described short-term prediction. The evaluation indexes of the SC-LSTM
in Table 1. Additionally, the forecasting results in the training, and LSTM models are described in Table 2. Furthermore, the
validation and testing based on the BP, ELM, SVM, and SC- forecasting results in the training, validation and testing based
LSTM model are shown in Figure 6. on the LSTM model and SC-LSTM model are depicted in Figure
On the basis of the forecasting error results presented in Table 1 7. Figure 8 presents the correlation factor R for the training,
and Figure 6, it can be seen that: (a) the SC-LSTM model is superior validation, and testing set by the LSTM and SC-LSTM model.
to the other models in training, validation, and testing. The reason From Table 2 and Figures 7-8, it can be concluded that: the
for this is that the LSTM adopts a special memory module and the SC-LSTM model is preferable to the LSTM model for training,
effective information (i.e., the back-propagated error) no longer validation and testing. For instance, the test results show that
relies on the current neuron, but is directly transmitted to the next the MAPE values of these two models are 3.0% and 2.57%,
layer via the gate in the memory module; (b) the BP model is respectively. Specifically, the proposed model learned on the
poorest in terms of the prediction and yields scattered prediction training set and the correlation coefficient achieved R=0.9988.
results and great deviation, suggesting that it is not flexible and The results provided by SC-LSTM model are very close to the
does not possess the necessary information extraction ability for real values, we can infer through it that the model learned the
complex data; (c) since the Elman model has a feedback structure, structure and of the peaks and trend of the time series. Notably,
it shows a certain memory function for time-series data. However, the WCT is used to analyze the correlation between the target
for a large amount of data, too many feedback structures easily and the adjacent analysis wind turbines can help in extracting
cause gradient explosion and disappearance, thus making the most of the hidden information with the data of wind turbines
prediction easily stagnate for a long time; (d) the SVM model and in improving model performance dramatically, especially
follows the criterion of the minimization of structural risks and in forecasting the peak values. Hence, this increase is expected
can maintain a certain generalization ability while minimizing the because the high linear correlation is normal and the advantage of
errors of samples. However, whilst the SVM model can achieve a applying WCT is well-utilized.

Training
Training sample distribution
Validation
Validating sample distribution Testing
Testing sample distribution
30 30 30
Actual Actual Actual
LSTM Predicted LSTM Predicted
25 LSTM Predicted
25 25

LSTM 20
20 20
wind speed(m/s)

wind speed(m/s)

wind speed(m/s)

15

15 15
10

10 10
5

0 5 5

-5 0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
time(5min) time(5min)
time(5min)
Training sample distribution Validating sample distribution Testing sample distribution
30 30 30
Actual Actual Actual

SC-LSTM 25
SC LSTM Predicted
25
SC LSTM Predicted
25
SC LSTM Predicted

20 20 20
wind speed(m/s)

wind speed(m/s)
wind speed(m/s)

15 15 15

10 10 10

5 5 5

0 0 0

-5 -5 -5
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
time(5min) time(5min) time(5min)

Figure 7. Prediction results of forecasting models by the LSTM and SC-LSTM model.

Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 93, 2019

630 Shi et al.

Table 2. Performance evaluations of forecasting models for wind speed.

Model RMSE (m/s) MAE (m/s) MAPE (%)

Train Valid Test Train Valid Test Train Valid Test
LSTM 0.25 0.51 0.57 0.13 0.27 0.33 5.44 5.15 3.0
SC-LSTM 0.19 0.49 0.49 0.10 0.26 0.28 3.42 6.07 2.57

Training period Validation period

Testing period

Figure 8. Correlation coefficient for training, validation and testing data set by the LSTM and SC-LSTM model.

DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
This study introduced a novel spatial correlation theory, wavelet
continuous transform (WCT), which can be used to detect the
spatial–temporal correlations with adjacent wind turbines. The
effectiveness of WCT can capture the nonlinearity functional
relationship between the time and spatial series. At the same time,
it can reflect time-lag characteristics between time series. The
problem of predicting wind speed from new wind turbines where
there is a lack of historical data is assessed using WCT. A very
short-term prediction of wind speed shows that the model could
improve the accuracy for the target wind turbine.
The study demonstrated that LSTM can provide accurate wind
speed predictions for wind power plants. In addition, LSTM can
be used as a powerful tool in decision making, which can take
advantage of the forecasting. Intelligent wind farms will become
the backbone of the smart grid. Spatial-temporal closely related
data and algorithms are integrated to promote the grid connection.
Additionally, the wind power curtailment condition of wind plants
can be controlled with DNN.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The data is supported by the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory (https://www.nrel.gov/research/data-tools.
html). This research was jointly funded by the National Key
Research and Development Program of China (grant number
2017YFC0405900), the National Natural Science Foundation
of China (grant number 51709221), the Planning Project of
Science and Technology of Water Resources of Shaanxi (grant
numbers 2015slkj-27 and 2017slkj-19), the China Scholarship
Council (grant number 201608610170), the Open Research Fund
of State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water
Cycle in River Basin (China Institute of Water Resources and
Hydropower Research, grant number IWHR-SKL-KF201803, the
Belt and Road Special Foundation of the State Key Laboratory
of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering
(2018490711), and the Doctorate Innovation Funding of Xi’an
University of Technology (grant number 310-252071712).
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