Optimization of a wind farm layout to mitigate the wind power intermittency

The wind power intermittency arises from turbulent wind fluctuations and wakes generated in a wind farm. Conventional studies have used energy storage to compensate for excessive changes in wind power but cannot mitigate fluctuations of the actual generated power over time. By optimizing the layout to regulate wake fields, the generated power can be adjusted under specific wind conditions (i.e., speed and direction). Temporal fluctuations in the wind power of a wind farm are amplified in specific wind conditions due to degraded power caused by wakes. To improve wind power intermittency, the spatial distribution of wake fields has to be designed to compensate for temporal fluctuations in wind conditions. In the present study, a multi-objective optimization method for a wind farm layout is developed to consider not only wind power intermittency but also the generated power. Pareto front, which consists of optimal layouts of wind farms, is obtained for both the uniformly modeled and real-world wind data. The optimal layouts in Pareto front show higher generated power and lower wind power intermittency compared to the reference checkerboard layout. The wind power intermittency of the optimal layouts is mitigated by spatial interference due to wakes.