Wind farm layout using Biogeography Based Optimization

6 Wind energy is one of the most promising option for the renewable energy. Finding optimum set of locations for wind turbines in a wind farm so that the total energy output of the farm is maximum, is usually referred as the wind farm layout optimization problem (WFLOP). This article presents the solution of WFLOP using a recent unconventional optimization algorithm, Biogeography Based Optimization (BBO). In this article, for a given wind farm not only the optimum locations of the wind turbines are obtained but also the maximum number of turbines is recommended. Experiments have been carried out for wind farms of various sizes. BBO has shown to outperform as compare to earlier methodologies of solving WFLOP.