Towards holistic wind farm design optimization: an integrated multidisciplinary approach

Despite the inherent complexity of wind farm design, sequential optimizations are traditionally used to design each component independently, neglecting their inter-dependencies. Recent studies have shown that coupling design problems can lead to significant gains in terms of power production and profitability. In this paper, we present a methodology to combine the design of wind farm layout, support structure, collection system and wind farm control, using an integrated approach, while accounting for day-ahead market price variability. A set of different optimization approaches is applied to a case study, investigating the benefits of solving each problem jointly rather than sequentially. The results indicates that a fully integrated approach leads to more profitable designs, but with different contributions from each problem. Specifically, for the case study addressed, the most significant improvement was driven by the joint optimization of wind turbines placement, collection system layout and wind farm control strategy.