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Title: A system-level cost-of-energy wind farm layout optimization with landowner modeling

Journal Article · · Energy Conversion and Management

This work applies an enhanced levelized wind farm cost model, including landowner remittance fees, to determine optimal turbine placements under three landowner participation scenarios and two land-plot shapes. Instead of assuming a continuous piece of land is available for the wind farm construction, as in most layout optimizations, the problem formulation represents landowner participation scenarios as a binary string variable, along with the number of turbines. The cost parameters and model are a combination of models from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Windustiy. The system-level cost-of-energy (COE) optimization model is also tested under two land-plot shapes: equally-sized square land plots and unequal rectangle land plots. The optimal COEs results are compared to actual COE data and found to be realistic. The results show that landowner remittances account for approximately 10% of farm operating costs across all cases. Irregular land-plot shapes are easily handled by the model. We find that larger land plots do not necessarily receive higher remittance fees. The model can help site developers identify the most crucial land plots for project success and the optimal positions of turbines, with realistic estimates of costs and profitability. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Research Organization:
Ames Lab., Ames, IA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
DOE Contract Number:
DE-AC02-07CH11358
OSTI ID:
1134707
Report Number(s):
IS-J 8243
Journal Information:
Energy Conversion and Management, Vol. 77; ISSN 0196-8904
Publisher:
Elsevier
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English