Combined Approach of Firefly Algorithm with Travelling Salesmen Problem for Optimal Design of Offshore Wind Farm

The green energy revolution has promoted the use of renewable energy sources (RES). The offshore wind energy is taking major share in global wind energy. Large offshore wind farms (OSWs) are experiencing economic challenges as well as wake effect. These issues can be mitigated by optimal design (OD) of OSW. In this paper, a new combo approach based on Firefly algorithm and Travelling salesmen problem is proposed. The wake effect can be nullified by placement of wind turbines (WTs) based on Larsen wake model. The OD of OSW is made by considering the constraints such as, length of the interconnecting cable between the WTs and wake effect on WTs. This minimization of length will decline the cable cost which constitutes major part of the cost of OSW. The proposed method is applied to North Hoyle OSW with thirty WTs considering OD of ring and radial topologies. The estimation of wake effect including value of wake loss and energy production of OSW is explained.