Cable Connection Scheme Optimization for Offshore Wind Farm Considering Wake Effect

In order to reduce the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) of the offshore wind farm, many optimization works should be done to reduce the investment and increase the energy production. As one of the main expenses, the electrical system can take up more than 15% of the total investment while cable costs take a large proportion. In order to make a cost-effective wind farm, the cable connection layout should be optimized. This paper proposes a novel way for offshore wind farm cable connection layout design. The LCOE, which concerns three aspects: electrical power losses, power captured by wind turbines (WT) and investment, is selected to set up the objective function. Since all the optimization variables are integers, a heuristic algorithm, integer particle swarm optimization algorithm (IPSO), is adopted to find a near optimal solution. To improve the performance of the IPSO, an adaptive method for parameter control is used to help to find a better solution. Comparisons are made with results obtained by the Norwegian center for offshore wind energy (NORCOWE) reference wind farm and the presented method. From the simulation, it can be noticed that the presented approach can help to find a cable connection scheme which can reduce the LCOE by 1.75%.