Developing a flexible platform for optimal engineering design of commercial wind farms

In this paper, we develop a flexible design platform to account for the influences of key factors in optimal planning of commercial scale wind farms. The Unrestricted Wind Farm Layout Optimization (UWFLO) methodology, which avoids limiting assumptions regarding the farm layout and the selection of turbines, is used to develop this design platform. This paper presents critical advancements to the UWFLO methodology to allow the synergistic consideration of (i) the farm layout, (ii) the types of commercial turbines to be installed, and (iii) the expected annual distribution of wind conditions at a particular site. We use a recently developed Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) based method to characterize the multivariate distribution of wind speed and wind direction. Optimization is performed using an advanced mixed discrete Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm. We also implement a high fidelity wind farm cost model that is developed using a Radial Basis Function (RBF) based response surface. The new optimal farm planning platform is applied to design a 25-turbine wind farm at a North Dakota site. We found that the optimal layout is significantly sensitive to the annual variation in wind conditions. Allowing the turbine-types to be selected during optimization was observed to improve the annual energy production by 49% compared to layout optimization alone.