Integer programming for optimal yaw control of wind farms

Abstract. It is well-known that wakes caused by the wind turbines within a wind farm negatively impact the power generation and mechanical load of downstream turbines. This is already partially considered in the farm layout. Nevertheless, the strong interactions between individual turbines provide further opportunities to mitigate adverse effects during operation, e.g., by repeatedly adjusting axial induction or yaw angles to current wind conditions. We propose a mathematical approach in form of integer programming for globally optimal yaw control (under some mild assumptions). While we prove the wind farm yaw problem to be strongly 𝒩𝒫-hard in general, we demonstrate through numerical experiments that our method is efficient in practice and enables optimal yaw control under real-world requirements on control update periods. In particular, the approach remains efficient if turbines are deactivated and scales reasonably well with increasing farm width.