Design of electrical layout of offshore wind farms

The cost and efficiency of offshore wind farms are determined by a variety of factors which include the type of electrical system (AC or DC), transmission length, transmission voltage, rated power, wind turbine type, farm topology, and wind speed. Since the design variable space is large for such problems, computational optimization is necessary to find an optimal solution. This paper discusses a design methodology to determine the optimal values of components to minimize the cost of an offshore wind farm. The cost, loss, reliability models, and the application of geometric programing for optimization of the layout and configuration of an offshore wind farm are presented. The results include how ratings of individual components are influenced by the loss, reliability, and area constraints in order to minimize the cost. Also, the total capacity of the wind farm determines the optimum components to minimize the cost. The cost of energy production and cost per installed kW are comparable well with existing wind farms and other published data. Published by AIP Publishing.