The investigation of tower height matching optimization for wind turbine positioning in the wind farm

The tower height of the turbines should match the potential site to achieve maximum power output per unit cost when constructing wind farm. In this paper, the tower height matching problem in wind turbine positioning optimization is studied, based on the wind speed characteristics of the site, the wind turbine power curve, the linear turbine wake flow model and the cost model. The global greedy algorithm with repeated adjustment is employed to solve the wind turbine positioning optimization problem. The Turbine-Site Matching Index (TSMI) is introduced as the objective function, with the consideration of the height effects both on the capacity factor (CF) and the initial capital cost (ICC). A normalized power output (L) is defined to analyze the matching problem. The optimal tower height is obtained through modeling L. The power curve model with and without power control mechanisms are studied. The computational results indicate that the proposed method can obtain the approximated optimal height in short computational time. The height effects on the wake flow and the distances among turbines reduce the optimal height. For the whole turbine layout, the higher tower heights are not always desirable for optimality. There exists an optimal tower height when maximizing TSMI. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.