On the tails of the wind ramp distributions

Abstract

We analyzed several multiyear wind speed datasets from 4 different geographical locations. The probability density functions of wind ramps from all these sites revealed remarkably similar shapes. The tails of the probability density functions are much heavier than a Gaussian distribution, and they also systematically depend on time increments. Quite interestingly, from a purely statistical standpoint, the characteristics of the extreme ramp‐up and ramp‐down events are found to be almost identical. With the aid of extreme value theory, we describe several other inherent features of extreme wind ramps in this paper.