Steady State Electrical Design, Power Performance and Economic Modeling of Offshore Wind Farms

A load flow model has been developed for the evaluation of thirteen different electrical architectures for large offshore wind farms. In a case study, these architectures have been evaluated for two wind farm sizes (100 and 500 MW) and two distances to shore (20 and 60 km). The case study has shown that systems C1 (string layout) and C2 (star layout), have the lowest contribution of the electrical system to the price per kWh (Partial Levelized Production Cost PLPC). C1 and C2 system prices are 19.7 and 24.9 MEuro (100 MW, 20 km), 36.9 and 42.1 MEuro (100 MW, 60 km), 91.7 and 109.5 MEuro (500 MW, 20 km) and 132.9, 150.7 MEuro (500 MW, 60 km). For comparison another case study with prolonged life-time and predicted price decrease of power electronic components is shown too.