Wind Farm Layout Sensitivity Analysis and Probabilistic Model of Landowner Decisions

This paper presents two findings in wind farm layout uncertainty analysis research: sensitivity to parameters and representation of landowner participation. It first tests a farm design optimization model's sensitivity to the parameters of surface roughness, economies-of-scale cost reduction, and wind shear. Then, the paper presents a new and novel landowner participation model of willingness-to-accept monetary compensation, with risk of participation modeled as uncertainty. The robust design formulation uses probability theory, latin hypercube sampling, and compromise programming to minimize the two objectives: the normalized mean and standard deviation of Cost-of-Energy, the annual cost of running the farm divided by its annual energy output. The results show that uncertain parameters of wind shear and economies-of-scale cost reduction have large influence over results in the sensitivity analysis, while surface roughness is not. Additionally, modeling landowners' participation in the project as uncertain allows the optimization to identify land that may be risky or costly to secure, but worth the investment. 1 Corresponding author information can be added as a footnote. Journal of Energy Resources Technology 2