Offshore substation locating in wind farms based on prim algorithm

The investment of offshore wind farm is large while the cost on electrical system can take up to 15% of the total costs. In order to reduce the cost, it is desirable to optimize the electrical system layout in design phase. Since the location of offshore substation (OS) is highly related to the electrical system layout, the optimal layout design work should be done with the consideration of the impact of the location of offshore substation on the submarine cable connection layout to minimize the investment of cables. This paper addresses a new method to optimize the OS location together with the cable connection layout. The results show that the proposed method is an effective way for offshore wind farm cable connection layout design.