Wind turbine selection for wind farm layout using multi-objective evolutionary algorithms

Wind energy has become the world's fastest growing energy source. Although wind farm layout is a well known problem, its solution used to be heuristic, mainly based on the designer experience. A key in search trend is to increase power production capacity over time. Furthermore the production of wind energy often involves uncertainties due to the stochastic nature of wind speeds. The addressed problem contains a novel aspect with respect of other wind turbine selection problems in the context of wind farm design. The problem requires selecting two different wind turbine models (from a list of 26 items available) to minimize the standard deviation of the energy produced throughout the day while maximizing the total energy produced by the wind farm. The novelty of this new approach is based on the fact that wind farms are usually built using a single model of wind turbine. This paper describes the usage of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) in the context of power energy production, selecting a combination of two different models of wind turbine along with wind speeds distributed over different time spans of the day. Several MOEAs variants belonging to the most renowned and widely used algorithms such as SPEA2 NSGAII, PESA and msPEA have been investigated, tested and compared based on the data gathered from Cancun (Mexico) throughout the year of 2008. We have demonstrated the powerful of MOEAs applied to wind turbine selection problem (WTS) and estimate the mean power and the associated standard deviation considering the wind speed and the dynamics of the power curve of the turbines. Among them, the performance of PESA algorithm looks a little bit superior than the other three algorithms. In conclusion, the use of MOEAs is technically feasible and opens new perspectives for assisting utility companies in developing wind farms. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.