Pia Isolähteenmäki completed her second master’s degree, this time in Advanced Energy Solutions at Aalto University and she conducted her thesis for Kjeller Vindteknikk (KVT) in Finland. “One of the main research questions was to determine the economic value of KVT’s IceLossForecast for operational wind farms in SPOT electricity markets in Finland,” Pia explains. “I also studied how forecast lead time impacts the accuracy of the production forecast and evaluated the performance of national-level icing loss forecast.” These national level IceLossForecasts are operationally used by the Finnish TSO Fingrid.
Results: Over 10% of the forecasting error costs would have been avoided using KVT’s icing forecast
The economic value of icing loss forecast was assessed from different market strategy perspectives. For example, Pia estimated what the cost of forecast errors would have been for an operator correcting its imbalance in the intraday market (Example 2) compared to one leaving it entirely for imbalance settlement (Example 1).
A graphical illustration of the wind power forecast error cost calculations from perspective of two different market participants/ market strategy users.
The use of IceLossForecast (ILF) resulted in overall reduction of error costs by over 10% and during extreme prices up to 20-40%. The thesis highlighted that evaluating model performance from an economic perspective can offer practical insights.
Total relative reduction of cost (without January 2024) for different example perspectives: 1. Leaving the error to balancing market, 2. Participating to ID market.
Conclusions and recommendations
The results illustrate the profitability of participation in the intraday market to minimize imbalance costs. Using the ILF during the study period (winters 2023-2024 and 2024-2025) was found to have added value in both strategies. However, some challenges were revealed in ILF ice removal. An improvement has already been implemented for the upcoming season.
“If the research does not exist, we will do it ourselves. This has been our motto since the start and we have been very pleased with Pia’s excellent thesis work contributions. Her work will help us further improve our icing forecast products but the thesis will provide valuable insights to the entire wind energy research community.” says managing director Ville Lehtomäki.
Link to full thesis: https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202508196542
Pia Isolähteenmäki
Advisor
M.Sc. Meteorology & M.Sc. (Tech.) Advanced Energy Solutions