Optimal Wind Farm Collector System Topology Design Considering Total Trenching Length

This paper addresses the optimal cable layout design of a collector system in a large-scale wind farm. The objective is the minimization of total trenching length which is the sum of lengths of all branches of the collector system tree. A graph-theoretic minimum spanning tree algorithm has been used as a starting algorithm, and improvements and modifications have been proposed to cater to the constraints and characteristics of a wind farm collector system. The contribution of this paper is three-fold. First, an algorithm has been proposed to further improve the results of the minimum spanning tree algorithm by creating external splice locations separate from the wind turbine locations in computing the cable layout configuration. Second, an algorithm has been proposed to compute the minimum trenching length layout configuration under the constraint of a prespecified maximum number of turbines connected to a feeder cable. Third, an algorithm has been developed to automatically compute the direction and magnitude of power flow on the different cables and to assign cable sizes accordingly.