A novel hybrid model for multi-step-ahead forecasting of wind speed based on univariate data feature enhancement

Reliable multistep ahead wind speed forecasting (MAWSF) is critical for the energy management of wind farms and the long-term maintenance of wind power systems. However, relying on inherent meteorological features such as temperature and atmospheric pressure often fails to meet the deep learning model’s feature requirements for accurate wind speed forecasting (WSF). This paper introduces a hybrid multistep forecasting model that constructs a univariate wind speed feature enhancement framework, combining random forest (RF) and Transformer models for WSF. Initially, the hybrid enhancement framework decomposes the univariate wind speed data and extracts time-series features, effectively mining the latent feature information. Subsequently, the RF feature selector filters out significant features contributing to WSF and eliminates redundant features to provide stable features. Finally, the Transformer model is utilized for both short-term and long-term MAWSF. This study conducted MAWSF on data with sampling intervals of 20 min, 30 min and 1 h. The results indicate that, compared to existing state-of-the-art models, the hybrid model in MAWSF tasks reduces the dependency of models on inherent meteorological features, achieving more accurate forecasting and faster computation speeds. Ultimately, the proposed model can provide reliable technical support for energy management and maintenance guidance in real-world wind farms.