Optimal placement of off-shore wind turbines and subsequent micro-siting using Intelligently Tuned Harmony Search algorithm

The placement of wind turbines in a wind farm is configured to minimize wake interactions between individual turbines to ensure maximum power generation. Unrestricted Wind Farm Layout Optimization (UWFLO) in conjunction with Intelligently Tuned Harmony Search (ITHS) was employed to optimize the placement of wind turbines, given constraints of farm boundary, number of turbines and wind conditions. UWFLO takes into account the overlap between the wake generated by an upstream turbine and the blades of a downstream turbine to predict the total power generated by a wind farm (with greater accuracy). The study was run for three cases: 1) Constant wind speed and constant wind direction; 2) Constant wind speed and variable wind direction and 3) Variable wind speed and variable wind direction. Comparisons were made with other optimization algorithms, viz Genetic Algorithm (GA), Harmony Search (HS) and Improved Harmony Search (IHS). ITHS was unable to perform better than GA in Case 1, but delivered better results by 4% in Case 2 and 6% in Case 3.