Energy Informatics (Sep 2022)

Solar farm cable layout optimization as a graph problem

  • Sascha Gritzbach,
  • Dominik Stampa,
  • Matthias Wolf

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s42162-022-00200-z
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. S1
pp. 1 – 20

Abstract

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Abstract We introduce the Solar Farm Cable Layout Problem (SoFaCLaP), a novel graph-theoretic optimization problem. SoFaCLaP formalizes the task of finding a cost-optimal cable layout in a solar farm where PV string positions are already determined but the positions of other components such as transformers can be picked from a set of candidate positions. The problem statement incorporates a network flow model in which the flow value of a connection represents the number of strings that are (indirectly) connected to a transformer via this connection. A mixed-integer linear program (MILP) formulation is proposed that uses binary variables to indicate which of several available cable types is chosen for each connection. We propose a framework to randomly generate benchmark instances to evaluate any algorithmic approach to SoFaCLaP. In particular, we generate a set of instances based on real-world solar farm characteristics. With an extensive evaluation of the MILP formulation on those instances we establish mixed-integer linear programming as a baseline for future algorithmic approaches to finding solar farm cable layouts.

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