A novel geometric pattern-based approach to maximize power output of a wind farm

The placement of wind turbines is crucial for a wind farm because the power generation of wind turbine is greatly affected by the wake effect produced by the upstream turbines. The optimum placement of wind turbines in a wind farm will give the maximum total power output. The effective methodology is imperative to place turbines in such a way that effect of the wake is minimum on a performance of turbines and has a proper utilization of the wind farm area. The present study proposes a novel approach based on the geometrical pattern-inspired placement methodology to locate wind turbines and maximize the power output of a wind farm. In the proposed approach, various geometrical patterns made from circle, hexagon, pentagon and triangle are considered for the numerical investigation. Further, wind behavior is modeled for uniform and variable wind speed from all directions. The present approach is also experimented numerically with and without land availability constraints. Heat transfer search algorithm is used to solve the wind farm layout optimization problem with the proposed approach and the results are compared with other approaches available in the literature. Results show that the proposed geometrical pattern-based approach produces the higher power generation (~4–8%) compared to other approaches for the variable wind speed scenario. In the case of land availability constraints, about 4% higher power generation compared to the grid-based approach is achieved. In order to place turbines with an optimum performance of a wind farm, the present approach can be helpful to wind farm developers.