A decision theoretic framework for reliability-based optimal wind turbine selection

Abstract

The problem of choosing the optimal wind turbine for a specific site is of special importance in the design process of wind farm. Manifestly, the selection of the optimal wind turbine should depend on a certain criteria. In this paper, optimal wind turbine selection is studied in terms of the capacity factor of wind turbine generator and the Expected Energy not Supplied which is one of the most commonly used reliability indices for power systems. The latter one considers the load profile of the system and is suitable to compare different wind farm compositions while the former one completely ignores the load profile of the system. This paper presents general theoretical results that are helpful to compare performance of wind turbines and wind farms without data collection and further numerical assessment. In particular, the conditions on wind turbine characteristics and availability values of wind turbines are determined to compare wind turbines and wind farms in terms of the capacity factor and Expected Energy not Supplied.