Robust Wind Farm Layout Optimization Under Weibull Distribution by Monte Carlo Simulation

Abstract

The wake shadowing problem is the main cause to the wind power exploitation losses for a wind farm. In order to boost the cost-competitiveness of wind energy compared to other renewable energy sources, it is imperative to reduce the wake losses for wind power exploitation in the wind farm. Among different approaches, the wind farm layout optimization is one of the most effective tools, which however, is very dependent on the condition of local wind resources for the optimization results. This paper aims to study the optimization of wind farm layout considering the uncertainty of wind conditions due to its unpredictability and randomness. The effect of uncertain wind condition on the wind farm optimization results is investigated by conducting the robust optimization of wind farm layout with the description of wind speed variation by Weibull distribution, while the evaluation of wind farm layout under the Weibull distribution is achieved by the Monte Carlo simulation. The robustness of the wind farm layout optimization results is evaluated by the wind farm expected total power output and the power variation for the sampled wind speed and wind direction obtained by Monte Carlo simulation. Through the robust optimization, it is found that under the Weibull distribution for a square-shape wind farm, the optimal wind farm layout is very sensitive to the incoming wind directions. It shows a very distinctive distribution of wind turbine placement even when only the probability of wind directions changes while the wind directions are fixed.