Simultaneous Optimization Of Electrical Interconnection Configuration In Onshore Wind Fields

Abstract

The electrical interconnection cost of onshore wind fields (WF) is a part that should not be neglected in the design of WF. In order to minimize the investment and operational costs, this paper pro-poses an optimization formulation to find the optimal electrical interconnection configuration of wind turbines (WTs), simultaneously. This simultaneous minimization of total trenching length is done during а WF layout optimization by application of evolutional algorithm. In this paper, an algorithm is considered to comprehensively assess the optimal interconnection layout of the WTs. The interconnections are considerable fraction of the overall design cost of the WF. The optimal electrical interconnection design obtained by an algorithm with implemented Euclidean Minimum Spanning Tree method, corresponds to a lower cost and coupled with the technological developments can help policy makers and WF developers increase the use of onshore wind energy as a feasible unlimited renewable source of electrical energy.