Optimization of Wind Turbine Interconnections in an Offshore Wind Farm Using Metaheuristic Algorithms

Abstract

Wind energy is currently one of the fastest-growing renewable energy sources in the world. For this reason, research on methods to render wind farms more energy efficient is reasonable. The optimization of wind turbine positions within wind farms makes the exploitation of wind energy more efficient and the wind farms more competitive with other energy resources. The investment costs alone for substation and electrical infrastructure for offshore wind farms run around 15–30% of the total investment costs of the project, which are considered high. Optimizing the substation location can reduce these costs, which also minimizes the overall cable length within the wind farm. In parallel, optimizing the cable routing can provide an additional benefit by finding the optimal grid network routing. In this article, the authors show the procedure on how to create an optimized wind farm already in the design phase using metaheuristic algorithms. Besides the optimization of wind turbine positions for more energy efficiency, the optimization methods of the substation location and the cable routing for the collector system to avoid cable losses are also presented.

New approach to optimize the cost and interconnections of wind turbines using the PSO algorithm

“…Table 3 illustrates the significant savings achieved by increasing the number of cable types and improving the location of the substation in the Horns Rev 1 offshore wind project. It is also noted that there is a reduction in power losses in the new configuration of the station and with the modification of the type of cable compared to previous studies [31].…”

Metal Requirements for Building Electrical Grid Systems of Global Wind Power and Utility-Scale Solar Photovoltaic until 2050

“…There could be quite different design choices even for the same power plant projects. To capture possible and rational development features of future wind and solar PV projects, we check the relevant project technical reports and the literature, − and estimate the most typical engineering designs of these projects at present and their future development trends. Full details can be found in Section 1.2 in the Supporting Information.…”

Wind Farm Layout Optimization/Expansion with Real Wind Turbines Using a Multi-Objective EA Based on an Enhanced Inverted Generational Distance Metric Combined with the Two-Archive Algorithm 2

“…where g 0 denotes the terrain roughness, and h i is WT hub height. The wake radius may be calculated using the linear wake model's conical wake area [63,64]:…”

“…The logarithmic law is used to extrapolate the wind speed at the j th WT's hub height based on the wind speed at a reference height [64,65].…”