An Integration Optimization Method for Power Collection Systems of Offshore Wind Farms

Abstract

The traditional power collection system design separately optimizes the connection topology and the cable cross sections, which may result in the inherent shortcoming of lacking the most economical solutions. In this pursuit, the present work envisages the development of an integrated design method for general wind farm power collection systems, which integrated the coupling random fork tree coding, union-find set loop identification, current and voltage drop calculation models, and a high performance optimization algorithm. The proposed coupling random fork tree coding, for the first time, realized the coupling code of the substation location, connection topology, and cable cross sections, providing the basis for the integration design of the power collection system. The optimization results for discrete and regular wind farms indicated that the proposed integration method achieved the best match of topology, substation location, and the cable cross sections, thus presenting the most economical scheme of the power collection system. Compared to the traditional two-step methods, the integration method used more branches while acquiring them, to maintain the lower number of wind turbines in each branch. Furthermore, it also employed large cross-section cables to reduce the energy loss caused by the impedance in the topology, thereby resulting in a slight increased cable cost; however, the total cost was minimized. The proposed method is very versatile and suitable for the optimization of power collection systems containing any number of wind turbines and substations, and can be combined with any evolutionary algorithm.

Wind Farm Cable Connection Layout Optimization with Several Substations

“…In a wind farm with 74 turbines, sixteen possible locations for substations are considered, and the goal is to optimize the layout of the wind farm with at most three substations. To contemplate this new issue, it is only necessary to include a new constraint (23), to the initially proposed model, WFLMS. The optimal solution for this case study was obtained in only 158.4 s.…”

“…Wang et al [15,23] use an integrated design method to minimize the total cost considering the substation location, connection topology, and cable cross-sections. The method uses an evolutionary algorithm to determine the substations coordinates, the substation associated with each turbine, and the cable layout.…”

“…So, it can be used to determine the best substation locations as long as a discrete set of substation locations is available. Furthermore, if a maximum number, M, of substations to be present in the solution is predefined, only Constraint (23) needs to be included.…”

“…The goal is to optimize the cable layout, choosing at most three of the available substations. To solve this problem, the model WFLMS including constraint (23) with M = 3 is considered.…”

Research of Emergency Modes of Wind Power Plants Using Computer Simulation

“…Ukraine has numerous wind energy resources and, due to its natural and climatic characteristics, can become one of the leading countries in wind energy utilization [2][3][4][5]. The total installed capacity is about 1.3 GW [6,7].…”