Unrestricted Wind Farm Layout Design With Optimal Control Considerations

Wind energy is a rapidly expanding source of renewable energy, but is highly intermittent. The performance of a wind farm, composed of a collection of wind turbines, depends not only on the placement of wind turbines in a farm, but also control actions taken by individual turbines. The wind turbine placement (layout) design problem involves adjusting turbine locations within a given area to improve a performance objective (such as maximizing annualized energy production). This layout problem has been addressed previously considering the effect of constraints such land configuration, installed capacity, and wake model choice on the performance of wind farms. All the studies, however, ignore the effects of the control system, which can have significant impact on performance. A well designed wind farm — without an optimal controller — will not achieve the full system level optimal performance, and vice-versa. In this article, we propose a novel layout co-design approach that includes optimal control considerations to exploit this synergy between farm layout and control. Layout case studies involving 8 and 12 turbines are presented. An annual energy production improvement of up to 17% is observed when accounting for coupling between control and layout design, when compared to layout-only optimization.