Abstract
To generate a commercially viable amount of electricity, wave energy converters (WECs) need to be deployed in arrays or “wave farms”. However, when designing a wave farm, there is a trade-off between the power production potential and installation/operational costs, with the optimal design for one objective not necessarily favourable for the other. In this work, we examine two primary objectives when designing a wave farm. The first objective is maximizing the overall power production of the farm with a single constraint, which is a minimum separation distance of 100 m between individual WECs. The second objective is minimizing the total cable length (with increased cable length leading to increased costs) connecting each WEC to a sub-station and from the sub-station to a shore crossing. The power take-off (PTO) parameters were optimized for each WEC in the array to generate maximum power in both cases. A case study examining the multiobjective optimization with a probability-based evolutionary strategy is conducted for wave conditions representative of Albany, Western Australia, with farms composed of 5, 10 and 15 fully submerged cylindrical point-absorber type WECs similar to Carnegie Clean Energy’s CETO-6 device. Simulations show that the converged layouts in the pareto front preferring maximum power form a single line aligned perpendicular to the predominant wave direction, whereas, the layouts preferring minimum cable length form multiple lines.