Optimal Design of the Cable Layout in Offshore Wind Farms using Firefly Algorithm and Minimum Spanning Tree

Abstract

More and more, wind energy is gaining interest in the Kingdom of Morocco as a sustainable energy source. All investments in this type of energy source so far have mainly been concentrated on onshore applications, although Morocco in fact is distinguished by two sea fronts stretching over a length of 3500 km along the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. This is due to the high investment costs and the complicated construction process of offshore wind farms at sea. Electrical infrastructure and offshore substation investment cost inside a wind farm can alone reach 15 − 30% of the total investment cost of the whole project, which is therefore regarded as extremely expensive. Hence, aiming to make offshore wind farms more attractive like onshore ones, we have developed an algorithm based on Clustering, Minimum Spanning Tree and Firefly Optimization, which can significantly decrease the total length of cables and thus its costs in the design phase of the project, and consequently minimize the associated power losses. This article introduces the results of the proposed optimization approach on randomly generated wind turbines in an offshore wind farm.