Cost analysis and optimal kV level selection of alternate wind farms

With the emerging of various transmission technologies, alternate wind farm configurations have been proposed to integrate different combinations of AC, HVDC and Low-frequency AC for in-farm and out-of-farm transmission. The problems of cost evaluation and kV level selection are raised for the alternate wind farm configurations. This paper presents the cost analysis method and the optimal kV level selection approach for the alternate configurations discussed. The analyzed cost consists of operational cost, acquisition cost and maintenance cost. The optimal kV level is selected based on the minimization of the total annualized cost of the wind farm. One of the proposed alternate configurations is used as a case study to demonstrate the cost analysis and optimal kV level selection methods. The kV level selection results and the minimum cost of all the eight alternate configurations proposed are also provided.