A Two-Echelon Wind Farm Layout Planning Model

In this paper, a two-echelon layout planning model is proposed to determine the optimal wind farm layout to maximize its expected power output. In the first echelon, a grid composed of cells with equal size is utilized to model the wind farm, whereas the center of each cell is the potential slot for locating a wind turbine. Optimization models are developed to determine the optimal size of grid cells and the optimal cells for locating wind turbines. In the second echelon, the selected grid cells are then translated to sets of Cartesian coordinates. The model for determining the optimal coordinate rather than the center in a grid cell for locating each wind turbine is formulated. Due to the model complexity in both echelons, the random key genetic algorithm (RKGA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm are applied to obtain the optimal solutions in the first and second echelon separately. The comparative analysis between the proposed two-echelon planning model and the traditional grid/coordinate-based planning models is conducted.