Design of Wind Farm Layout for Maximum Wind Energy Capture

The paper deals with the wind farm layout optimization problem (WFLOP). The objective of the wind farm layout optimization problem is to determine the optimal placement of wind turbines within the farm. In this approach, the expected power production is maximized, taking into account eventually different other supplementary technological and functional restrictions. Because the wake effects lead to significant losses of power produced by the wind turbines, minimizing them in order to maximize the expected power production is essential. In this paper a discrete representation of wind farm is used: farm area is decomposed into a set of cells, where each cell can contain only one wind turbine. Presently, this problem is usually solved using heuristic algorithms, trying to find good enough solutions in reasonable time. In this paper, some small cases are detailed investigated, using an exact solution method to solve this problem. Some new aspects regarding the multimodal character, the existence of multiple optimal solutions of objective function, and the exact gap between the lower and upper bounds of the objective function are outlined.