Optimizing wind farms layouts for maximum energy production using probabilistic inference: Benchmarking reveals superior computational efficiency and scalability

• Published in: Energy (Oxford) 2021-05, Vol.223, p.120035, Article 120035
• Main Authors: Dhoot, Aditya, Antonini, Enrico G.A., Romero, David A., Amon, Cristina H.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Algorithms; Approximation; Benchmarks; Computational efficiency; Computational modelling; Computer applications; Computing costs; Design; Design parameters; Discretization; Layout; Layouts; Message passing; Optimization; Optimization methods; Probabilistic inference; Probability theory; Spatial dependencies; Stochasticity; Turbines; Wake effects; Wind farms; Wind power; Wind turbines
• ISSN: 0360-5442; 1873-6785
• DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.120035

Successful development of wind farms relies on the optimal siting of wind turbines to maximize the power capacity under stochastic wind conditions and wake losses caused by neighboring turbines. This paper presents a novel method to quickly generate approximate optimal layouts to support infrastructure design decisions. We model the quadratic integer formulation of the discretized layout design problem with an undirected graph that succinctly captures the spatial dependencies of the design parameters caused by wake interactions. On the undirected graph, we apply probabilistic inference using sequential tree-reweighted message passing to approximate turbine siting. We assess the effectiveness of our method by benchmarking against a state-of-the-art branch and cut algorithm under varying wind regime complexities and wind farm discretization resolutions. For low resolutions, probabilistic inference can produce optimal or nearly optimal turbine layouts that are within 3% of the power capacity of the optimal layouts achieved by state-of-the-art formulations, at a fraction of the computational cost. As the discretization resolution (and thus the problem size) increases, probabilistic inference produces optimal layouts with up to 9% more power capacity than the best state-of-the-art solutions at a much lower computational cost. •The WFLO is posed as an undirected graph and solved with probabilistic inference.•Our algorithm provides better or equivalent layouts to state-of-the-art methods.•The optimal layouts are generated at a fraction of the usual computational time.•Our approach offers a competitive and scalable solution for rapid decision making.