In this paper, an approach based on a genetic algorithm is presented in order to optimize the connection topology of an offshore wind farm network. The main objective is to introduce a technique of coding a network topology to a binary string. The first advantage is that the optimal connections of both middleand high-voltage alternating-current grids are considered, i.e., the radial clustering of wind turbines, the number and locations of the offshore electrical substations, and the number of high-voltage cables. The second improvement consists of removing infeasible network configurations as designs with crossing cables and thereby reduces the search space of solutions.Index Terms-Genetic algorithm (GA), network planning, offshore wind farm (OWF), optimization, Prim's algorithm.

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Offshore wind energy is a promising solution thanks to its best performance of production. However its development leads to many technical and especially economic challenges among them the electrical grid topology attracts a large investment. In this paper, our objective is to minimize a part of this total investment which represents the initial cost of the middle voltage cables in the internal network with different cross sections. An approach based on Genetic Algorithm is developed to find the best topology to connect all wind turbines and substations. The proposed model initially accepts all possible configurations: radial, star, ring, and tree. The results prove that the optimization model can be used for designing the electrical architecture of the internal network of an offshore wind farm.Index Terms-Genetic algorithm, middle voltage grid, offshore wind farm, optimization, wind energy.

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