Onshore wind farm - Reliability centered cable routing

Sanja Duvnjak Žarković,Ebrahim Shayesteh,Patrik Hilber

doi:10.1016/j.epsr.2021.107201

Sanja Duvnjak Žarković, Ebrahim Shayesteh + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2021.107201

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Abstract

Designing an onshore wind farm is a complex planning process that requires various stages to be completed. The prime focus of this work is to assist planners and experts in finding the optimal cable layout of the onshore wind farm. The optimization algorithm is designed using mixed integer linear programming (MILP). The MILP algorithm takes into account system reliability, power transfer capacities and power quality issue. The novelty in this optimization algorithm is to simultaneously minimize cable installation cost and the cost of lost energy production and therefore maximize the reliability of the system. Additionally, the algorithm supports the optimal selection among different cable options, with different features, prices and capacities. By calculating voltage increase at the point of connection (POC), power quality issue is considered as well. The designed algorithm provides optimal results for four different wind farm layouts. Every layout is tested for three different case scenarios, where different number and type of cables are considered. The results show that more cable options contribute in lowering the total costs. Moreover, cables with higher capacity can help in improving the power quality issue.

Highlights

Wind energy has attracted a lot of attention and investments in the last decades
This paper aims to find the optimal cable layout of an onshore wind farm using a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) approach
The MILP algorithm takes into account sys tem reliability, power transfer capacities and power quality issue

Summary

Introduction

Wind energy has attracted a lot of attention and investments in the last decades. It has been shown that wind farms can yield a great po tential of wind energy resources, their negative environmental impact is negligible, construction time short, and they have the shortest period of investment return in comparison with other renewables [1]. The fundamental aim of every wind farm design is to maximize energy production, minimize capital and operating costs, and stay within the constraints imposed by the site [2]. These constraints are usually associated with maximum installed capacity, site boundaries (such as road, dwellings, etc.), environmental, noise and visual issues, turbine minimum spacing, communication signals. In [10], a fast heuristic designed for wind farm cable routing problem is presented This heuristic iteratively improves a cable layout by finding and canceling negative cycles in a suitably defined network.

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