Design of wind farm layout with non-uniform turbines using fitness difference based BBO

Biogeography-based optimization (BBO) is an emerging meta-heuristic algorithm. BBO is inspired from the migration of species from one island to another. This study presents the solution of the wind farm layout optimization problem with wind turbines having non-uniform hub heights and rotor radii using BBO and an improved version of BBO. This study proposes an improved version of BBO, Fitness Difference Based BBO (FDBBO). FD-BBO is obtained by incorporating the concept of fitness differences in original BBO. First, in order to justify the superiority of FD-BBO over BBO, it is tested over 15 standard test problems of optimization. The numerical results of FD-BBO are compared with the original version of BBO and an advanced version of BBO, Blended BBO (BBBO). Through graphical and statistical analyses, FD-BBO is established to be an efficient and accurate algorithm. The BBO, BBBO and FD-BBO are than applied to solve the wind farm layout optimization problem. In the considered problem, not only the location of the wind turbines but hub heights and rotor radii are also taken as decision variables. Two cases of the problems are dealt: 26 turbines in the farm size of 2000 m x 2000 m and 30 turbines in the farm size of 2000 m x 2000 m. Numerical results are compared with earlier published results and that of original BBO and Blended BBO. It is found that FD-BBO is the better approach to solving the problem under consideration.