The accuracy of wind power prediction is important for assessing the security and economy of the system operation when wind power connects to the grids. However, multiple factors cause a long delay and large errors in wind power prediction. Hence, efficient wind power forecasting approaches are still required for practical applications. In this paper, a new wind power forecasting method based on Chaos Theory and Bernstein Neural Network (BNN) is proposed. Firstly, the largest Lyapunov exponent as a judgment for wind power system's chaotic behavior is made. Secondly, Phase Space Reconstruction (PSR) is used to reconstruct the wind power series' phase space. Thirdly, the prediction model is constructed using the Bernstein polynomial and neural network. Finally, the weights and thresholds of the model are optimized by Primal Dual State Transition Algorithm (PDSTA). The practical hourly data of wind power generation in Xinjiang is used to test this forecaster. The proposed forecaster is compared with several current prominent research findings. Analytical results indicate that the forecasting error of PDSTA BNN is 3.893% for 24 look-ahead hours, and has lower errors obtained compared with the other forecast methods discussed in this paper. The results of all cases studying confirm the validity of the new forecast method. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.