Layout Optimization Algorithms for the Offshore Wind Farm with Different Densities Using a Full-Field Wake Model

To decrease the power deficit of a wind farm caused by wake effects, the layout optimization is a feasible way for the wind farm design stage. A suitable optimization algorithm can significantly improve the quality and efficiency of the optimization process. For exploring the high-performance algorithms under different layout densities, a comparison is conducted by optimizing the layout of a real offshore wind farm with five algorithms, namely two population-based algorithms and three single-point algorithms. Wake effects are considered by a full-field wake model. A penalty function is proposed for the population-based algorithms to handle the constraint violations. Different iterations and constraints of the layout density are applied in the optimization. The random search has the best optimization results in all the cases and the control of the feasibility check is necessary for this algorithm. More iterations can advance the optimization results. The density constraint greatly affects the computational cost of the random search, which is significantly increased under the strict constraint. Except under the strict constraint, the random search has the best performance of optimization efficiency. A combination of the pattern search and random search is recommended when the strict constraint is applied in the layout optimization.