Optimal control of wind turbines for minimizing overall wake effect losses in offshore wind farms

This paper presents a new methodology for optimizing the wake effect performance and, therefore, the energy captured by the wind turbines in an offshore wind farm. The optimization is done by controlling the pitch angle and the tip speed ratio of each one of the wind turbines in order to minimize the overall wake effect between wind turbines and, as a consequence, maximize the power produced by the facility. The optimization is performed by using a genetic algorithm with the aim of maximizing the power production. The production model considers aspects as the wind turbine power coefficient dependence on the pitch angle and the tip speed ratio as well as the influence of these variables on the wake effect performance.