Wind speed prediction is an important technology in the wind power field; however, because of their chaotic nature, predicting wind speed accurately is difficult. Aims at this challenge, a backtracking search optimization–based least squares support vector machine model is proposed for short-term wind speed prediction. In this article, the least squares support vector machine is chosen as the short-term wind speed prediction model and backtracking search optimization algorithm is used to optimize the important parameters which influence the least squares support vector machine regression model. Furthermore, the optimal parameters of the model are obtained, and the short-term wind speed prediction model of least squares support vector machine is established through parameter optimization. For time-varying systems similar to short-term wind speed time series, a model updating method based on prediction error accuracy combined with sliding window strategy is proposed. When the prediction model does not match the actual short-term wind model, least squares support vector machine trains and re-establishes. This model updating method avoids the mismatch problem between prediction model and actual wind speed data. The actual collected short-term wind speed time series is used as the research object. Multi-step prediction simulation of short-term wind speed is carried out. The simulation results show that backtracking search optimization algorithm–based least squares support vector machine model has higher prediction accuracy and reliability for the short-term wind speed. At the same time, the prediction performance indicators are also improved. The prediction result is that root mean square error is 0.1248, mean absolute error is 0.1374, mean absolute percentile error is 0.1589% and R2 is 0.9648. When the short-term wind speed varies from 0 to 4 m/s, the average value of absolute prediction error is 0.1113 m/s, and average value of absolute relative prediction error is 8.7111%. The proposed prediction model in this article has high engineering application value.
