Evolutionary computation approaches for real offshore wind farm layout: A case study in northern Europe

This paper presents the layout optimization of a real offshore wind farm in northern Europe, using evolutionary computation techniques. Different strategies for the wind farm design are tested, such as regular turbines layout or free turbines disposition with fixed number of turbines. Also, different layout quality models have been applied, in order to obtain solutions with different characteristics of high energy production and low interlink cost. In all the cases, evolutionary algorithms are developed and detailed in the paper. The experiments carried out in the real problem show that the free design with fixed number of turbines is more appropriate and obtains better quality layouts than the regular design. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.