Optimal wind farm cable routing: Modeling branches and offshore transformer modules

Many EU countries aim at reducing fossil fuels in the near future, hence an efficient production of green energy is very important to reach this goal. In this article, we address the optimization of cable connections between turbines in an offshore wind park. Different versions of the problem have been studied in the recent literature. As turbines are becoming still more customized, it is important to be able to evaluate the impact of new technologies with a flexible optimization tool for scenario evaluation. In a previous joint project with Vattenfall BA Wind (a global leader in energy production) we have studied and modeled the main constraints arising in practical cases. Building on that model, in the present article, we address new technological features that have been recently proposed by Vattenfall's experts. We show how some new features can be modeled and solved using a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming paradigm. We report and discuss computational results on the performance of our new models on a set of real-world instances provided by Vattenfall.