Offshore wind farm electrical design using a hybrid of ordinal optimization and mixed-integer programming

Electrical layout design is, for offshore wind farms (OWF), a complex problem that has a far‐reaching impact on both plant cost and reliability. A full optimization of the layout, as opposed to just selecting the most favorable pre‐established configuration, is required in order to capture all the potential efficiencies. However, classical optimization methods such as mixed‐integer programming (MIP) might not be applicable to large OWFs. This paper describes a novel combination of ordinal optimization (OO) and MIP that is able to deal with large problems in reduced computation times with a statistical optimality guarantee. The algorithm is applied to a real case study taken from Barrow Offshore Wind Farm in the East Irish Sea. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.