Optimal Micro-Siting of Weathervaning Floating Wind Turbines

Abstract

This paper presents a novel tool for optimizing floating offshore wind farms based on weathervaning turbines. This solution is grounded on the ability of the assembly (wind turbine plus floater) to self-orientate into the wind direction, as this concept is allowed to freely pivot on a single point. This is a passive yaw potential solution for floating wind farms currently in the demonstration phase. A genetic algorithm is proposed for optimizing the levelised cost of energy by determining the geographical coordinates of the pivot points (i.e., the position over which the assembly can rotate to self-orient to the incoming wind direction). A tailored evaluation module is proposed to take into account the weathervaning motion around the pivot point depending on the incoming wind direction. The results obtained show the suitability of the proposed method to solve the addressed problem under realistic conditions. Additionally, the influence of the feasible region defined by the plot and the maximum area occupied on floating offshore wind farm design are also analysed in the proposed test cases. These deployable area constraints are of great importance for the viability of this technology, as it requires more space than classical solutions anchored to a fixed point.

Keywords

• floating offshore
• micro-siting
• offshore wind farm
• optimal layout
• passive yaw control