Optimal layout of a wind farm considering multiple wind directions

Energy production of a wind farm is considerably affected by wake-effect. Therefore, in wind farm planning, it is essential to optimize the layout of wind turbine generators (WTGs) to decrease the effect of wake-effect. This paper presents a model and a particle swarm optimization algorithm for optimizing the layout of a wind farm considering multiple wind directions in different time periods. A geometric theory is used to determine the upstream WTGs and calculate the horizontal and deviating distances between arbitrary two WTGs along the wind direction. A wake-effect model considering wind shade, wind shear, and wind direction of arbitrary angle is built. Based on the given historical wind speed and wind direction data, the optimal wind farm layout can be obtained using the proposed technique. The results show that the proposed technique is effective for optimizing the layout of WTGs in a wind farm.