A Mixed-Integer Linear Programming approach to wind farm layout and inter-array cable routing

Abstract

A Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) approach is proposed to optimize the turbine allocation and inter-array offshore cable routing. The two problems are considered with a two steps strategy, solving the layout problem first and then the cable problem. We give an introduction to both problems and present the MILP models we developed to solve them. To deal with interference in the onshore cases, we propose an adaptation of the standard Jensen's model, suitable for 3D cases. A simple Stochastic Programming variant of our model allows us to consider different wind scenarios in the optimization. For the inter-array cable routing, we propose a new MILP model able to deal with different constraints arsing in practical application, such as capacity limitations, substation limitations and non-crossing constraints. Computational results on real-world instances prove the practical viability of the approach.