Wind power trading: why forecast error drives imbalance costs
Every MWh you nominate and do not deliver, or deliver and did not nominate, is settled at the imbalance price — often several times the day-ahead price in a windy, volatile quarter hour. An industry-average forecast error of around 4.8% turns into €3–4 per MWh across the year; on a 100 MW farm that is more than €300,000. The wind farm route to market therefore starts with the forecast, not the trading desk.
SAMAWATT replaces the park-level forecast with a turbine-level model that knows each machine's power curve, availability and wake position, and uses the same model to drive nomination, intraday correction and balancing.
Turbine-level wind power forecasting, recalibrated every 15 minutes
The forecast blends several numerical weather models with SCADA telemetry from every turbine and learns each site's bias. Because the forecast and the trading engine share one horizon, a change in the 15-minute forecast immediately becomes a change in the intraday position.
- 1Forecast every turbineWeather ensembles, SCADA data and availability feed a per-turbine production forecast with a 2.3% mean absolute error.
- 2Nominate day-aheadThe aggregated forecast is bid into the day-ahead auction and the schedule is sent to the TSO and the plant controller.
- 3Correct intradayEvery 15 minutes the forecast is recalibrated and the auto-trader buys or sells the delta on the continuous intraday market.
- 4Net and settleRemaining deviations are netted against the rest of the portfolio before settlement; the statement shows imbalance per farm.
Imbalance cost reduction and wind capture rate uplift
Halving the forecast error more than halves the imbalance bill, because large errors in volatile hours dominate the cost. Clients moving to SAMAWATT see imbalance costs fall by up to 61%, from roughly €3.40 to €1.80 per MWh. Intraday re-trading adds a second lever: selling into evening ramps and buying back in over-supplied hours lifts the capture rate by about 14% against a day-ahead-only route to market.
The comparison table above shows the industry average against SAMAWATT for a 100 MW onshore farm; the revenue simulation sizes it for your own portfolio and market.
SAMAWATT wind direct marketing and balancing services
SAMAWATT trades onshore and offshore wind across 18 European markets and handles the national specifics on your behalf: Redispatch 2.0 and curtailment compensation in Germany, the Mécanisme d'ajustement in France, UVAM in Italy and the Balancing Mechanism in Great Britain. Direct marketing, balancing-group management and imbalance netting run on a single optimization engine, with asset-level reporting you can audit.
- Turbine-level production forecasting
- Day-ahead and intraday trading on EPEX, Nord Pool and ETPA
- Portfolio imbalance netting
- Balancing responsibility (registered or partner BRP)
- Redispatch 2.0 and curtailment compensation
- Market-premium and PPA accounting