Joint optimization for wind farm planning incorporating energy storage sizing

Equipping wind farms (WF) with energy storage (ES) could effectively mitigate the power fluctuation of wind energy, which makes the energy storage sizing optimization (ESSO) an increasingly important part in WF planning. Apart from this, wind farm layout optimization (WFLO) and wind farm collector system optimization (WFCSO) are also vital parts in the planning work. However, owing to the distinction in problem natures, WFLO, WFCSO, and ESSO are often tackled separately, and such isolation could lead to an ignorance of the co-effect so that the overall economy might not be achieved. To fill this gap, a joint optimization model is proposed with a double-layer optimization framework. The outer layer specifically focuses on WFLO, while ESSO and WFCSO are solved in 2 inner layers. Moreover, as WF integration could influence the electrical system’s operation and emission cost, other generators’ schedule optimization (OGSO) is also considered from the overall economic perspective and is set as the 3rd inner layer optimization. This WF joint planning method unifies the optimizations across all layers into a single economic objective to pursue a balanced trade-off between overall costs and power generations. The proposed optimization is tested in two cases with different 3D terrains, wind turbine models, and electrical systems, and the test results from both two cases verify the effectiveness of the proposed optimization method with a more than 5% improvement in levelized cost of energy (LCOE).