Optimization of Design of Wind Farm Layout for Maximum Wind Energy Capture: A New Constructive Approach

Abstract

Wind energy is becoming an attractive source of clean energy. However, this type of power source is subject to power reductions due to losses in wind energy conversion system and to frequent changes in wind velocity. For that reason, the important phase of a wind farm design is solving the Wind Farm Layout Optimization Problem (WFLOP), which consists in optimally positioning the turbines within the wind farm so that the wake effects are minimized and therefore the expected power production is maximized. This problem has been receiving increasing attention from the scientific community. In this paper, a mathematical optimization scheme is employed to optimize the locations of wind turbines with respect to maximizing the wind farm power production. To formulate the mathematical optimization problem, we used Jensen’s wake model. We calculate the wake loss and we express the expected wind farm power as a differentiable function in terms of the locations of the wind turbines. In this paper Furthermore, we develop a New Constructive Approach (NCA) to find the best solution to the wind turbines placement problem. Lastly, our results are compared with those in some other ealier studies.