Optimisation of wind farm layout in complex terrain via mixed‐installation of different types of turbines

Abstract

As wind energy is increasingly exploited worldwide, optimisation of wind farm layout becomes more crucial. To guarantee the economic efficiency and profit of a wind farm, the deployment of wind turbines has to be optimised before operation. Traditional methods usually assume that identical type of wind turbines are utilised in a layout design. In this study, multiple types of turbines are considered in wind farm layout optimisation in complex terrain, namely mixed-installation. By utilising different power generation characteristics, hub heights and rotor diameters, and cost models of different types of turbines, the efficiency of a wind farm can be further improved. A single-objective optimisation problem is firstly established by modelling all aforementioned factors, and the objective is to achieve a minimum cost per unit of energy. Subsequently, after using computational fluid dynamics to simulate the wind flow over complex terrain, a genetic algorithm-particle swarm optimisation optimisation algorithm is then proposed to determine the position and type of every individual turbine simultaneously. Eventually, extensive simulation studies are present to verify the feasibility of this scheme.