Heuristic methods for wind energy conversion system positioning

This paper considers the problem of determining the locations of wind generators in a wind farm consisting of many generators. The objective is to find a generator placement that maximizes profit, which is the product of the cost efficiency of the generators and the total power output from the wind farm. Generator placement is significant because if generator A is located close to generator B and is located downwind of generator B then the power output of generator A is reduced by an amount that varies with the distance between the generators. The problem can be formulated using mathematical programming but to solve the problem one cannot employ traditional optimization methods. Therefore, a greedy improvement heuristic methodology is developed and described in detail. The effectiveness of the proposed heuristic is demonstrated on a suite of test problems. These results indicate that the proposed method represents an effective solution strategy for this problem. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.