6. Optimal Siting of Wind Turbines in a Wind Farm

The purpose of micrositing is to find an optimal layout of a group of wind turbines in order to extract maximum power production from a wind farm. In the case of wind farm design, the wake interactions between wind turbines are one of the most critical subjects that should be considered. Because, not only they cause a decrease in wind speed which causes less energy production but also they lead to blade damages on wind turbines and high maintenance costs. Offering high quality layout solutions that needs to be decided before the design of a wind farm will lead to high profits for wind farm investors. Providing options to the investors regarding the quantity and optimal locations of wind turbines is the main concern of this paper, since erecting more turbines in certain locations sometimes may cause energy losses. In this study, a series of latitude-longitude data was generated by scanning the digital map of the wind farm site. The determination of locations where turbines can be placed is presented as a new approach in terms of wind farm area characterization. By doing so, a continuous search space is generated that brings more flexibility to mobilize wind turbines. The solution starts with a heuristic approach, and then a genetic algorithm is followed to find optimal placements of wind turbines considering minimizing the wake loss. At last, the optimum locations of the wind turbines are obtained, and the maximum number of turbines is recommended for the given wind farm.