A power-cardioid candidate for wind direction modelling motivated by two South African case studies

Abstract

Wind energy claims a positive image globally; therefore, accurate modelling of wind direction at generation sites accurately can enhance the potential of this green energy source. The uncertain nature of wind direction can be modelled through probability distributions; in this paper, we propose a flexible yet simple distribution, namely the Power-Cardioid distribution, as an alternative and implementable candidate to model wind direction. After discussing some characteristics, the performance of the Power-Cardioid distribution is evaluated via a simulation study and applied to datasets of two wind farms in South Africa. The numerical results demonstrate that this distribution is a promising and exciting new candidate compared to well-known models within circular statistics.

Description

DATA AVAILABILITY : The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Keywords

Generator, Kato and Jones distribution, Mixture distribution, Von Mises distribution, Wind direction

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG-07: Affordable and clean energy
SDG-13: Climate action

Citation

Ridder, D.v.Wd., Rad, N.N., Arashi, M. et al. A Power-Cardioid candidate for wind direction modelling motivated by two South African case studies. Afrika Matematika 36, 86 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13370-025-01306-9.