Wind power forecasts have been used operatively for over 20 years. Despite this fact, there are still several possibilities to improve the forecasts, both from the weather prediction side and from the usage of the forecasts. The new International Energy Agency (IEA) Task on Forecasting for Wind Energy tries to organize international collaboration, among national weather centers with an interest and/or large projects on wind forecast improvements (NOAA, DWD, …), operational forecasters, and forecast users.

The Task is divided into three work packages (WP): Firstly, a collaboration on the improvement of the scientific basis for the wind predictions themselves. This included numerical weather prediction model physics, but also widely distributed information on accessible datasets. Secondly, we aimed at an international pre-standard (an IEA Recommended Practice) on benchmarking and comparing wind power forecasts, including probabilistic forecasts. This WP also organized benchmarks, in cooperation with the IEA Task WakeBench. Thirdly, we engaged end users, intending to disseminate the usage of wind power predictions.