Optimal Turbine Allocation for Offshore and Onshore Wind Farms

Green energy became a topic of great interest in the recent years, as every year the demand for energy is increasing and the old resources, fossil fuels in particular, are pollutant and are becoming scarce. As a result, many countries have ambitious plans regarding green energy production. In particular, lots of money and energy are spent on the optimal design of wind farms, as an efficient use of the available resources is instrumental for their economical success. In the present paper we address the optimization of turbine positions, which is one of the most relevant problems in the design of a wind farm, and propose a heuristic approach based on Mixed-Integer Linear Programming techniques. Computational results on very large scale instances prove the practical viability of the approach.