A Study on Layout Optimization of Large-Scale Offshore Wind Farms

: In this study, we performed layout optimization for a 1.2 GW offshore wind farm, constructing a quantitative and reproducible procedure for large-scale farm design. Long-term European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts ERA5 reanalysis data were used for wind modeling and calculation of the frequency of wind occurrence. Two scenarios were analyzed: optimizing turbine orientations based on alignment scores and fixing the boundary for internal layout optimization aligned with the prevailing wind. The optimization was performed using continuous ant colony optimization, and integrating annual energy production (AEP) accounting for wake effects, and in-field cable costs (estimated via a minimum spanning tree). The first scenario yielded the highest AEP. Conversely, the boundary-fixed case also showed a comparatively high AEP while achieving a lower cable installation cost. In conclusion, the proposed framework successfully integrates the wind resource, wake effect, and cable cost into a generalized optimization objective for offshore wind farm layout and can be easily extendable to diverse sites and projects. Finally, it can be further refined by incorporating constraints on the maximum number of series-connected turbines, optimizing the substation location, and expanding the objective function to a full levelized cost of energy calculation that includes electrical losses and curtailment.