This project concerned an offshore wind farm in Taiwan with very large, rapidly migrating sand waves. The developer was unsure what the best position of the offshore substation (OSS) would be. Normally, it is around the centre of gravity of the wind turbines, but the export cables were significantly more expensive than the inter-array cables and the area was subject to rapidly migrating sand waves.
We started with a pilot project demonstrating that significant savings could be achieved if the OSS position was optimised with our approach. Then, we set up a full model for all dominant cost drivers for the substation (foundation cost, seabed preparation cost) and the cables (cable procurement cost, losses, dredging costs, maintenance cost). Finally, the optimal cable routes and corresponding OSS position were optimised numerically.
