Autocorrelations of power output from small scale PV and wind power systems

The current paper analyses with what pace and magnitude the output power of small photovoltaic systems and small wind turbine systems changes. This is of critical importance for the optimization of demand management, storage optimization and data acquisition of such systems. Data was compared from a photovoltaic and a wind turbine system that were located in the same geographic location. It was found that on the annual basis the standard deviation of the analyzed photovoltaic array was higher than that of the wind turbine, but the wind turbine output changes faster than the photovoltaic output, it has a faster declining time lag dependent autocorrelation. This characteristic was confirmed by multiple wind turbine case studies.