Seeding evolutionary algorithms with heuristics for optimal wind turbines positioning in wind farms

In this paper a novel evolutionary algorithm for optimal positioning of wind turbines in wind farms is proposed. A realistic model for the wind farm is considered in the optimization process, which includes orography, shape of the wind farm, simulation of the wind speed and direction, and costs of installation, connection and road construction among wind turbines. Regarding the solution of the problem, this paper introduces a greedy heuristic algorithm which is able to obtain a reasonable initial solution for the problem. This heuristic is then used to seed the initial population of the evolutionary algorithm, improving its performance. It is shown that the proposed seeded evolutionary approach is able to obtain very good solutions to this problem, which maximize the economical benefit which can be obtained from the wind farm. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.