## 2 Overview of the Basic Concepts of Wind Farm Design and Optimization
### Wind Farm Planning--Guidelines and Standards
The output wind field is convoluted numerically with the resulting statistical distributions of the 10-min averaged wind speed measurements at different heights and wind directions, resulting in averaged wind resource maps at different heights, which are the base for the wind farm planning process. Other sources of information such as Mesoscale modeling and the Measure-Correlate-Predict (MCP) techniques [36; 42] could also provide valuable information of the local atmospheric behavior and the wind resource potential. (2) _Wind Farm Design_. The wind farm sizing refers to the process of designing the size of the wind farm in terms of the constrained land area and its potential capacity. The wind farm size will be a function of many factors including the expected power demand from the energy consumers. The wind farm layout design or micro-siting process refers to the design of: (1) a configuration or arrangement of the individual WTs (specified by locations on spatial coordinates (\(x,y,z\)) down to 1 m in resolution); (2) their electrical interconnections; and (3) the auxiliary communication and civil engineering infrastructure within the selected site. The optimal design thus results from an optimization given all economic, environmental, technical and social conditions and constraints by using a mono- or multi-objective criteria. During the wind farm micro-siting process, economic simulations, accounting for all available incentives, are performed with the aim of quantifying the expected economic profits of the project while assuming all energy and environmental regulations to be satisfied. Once the economic feasibility of a preliminary project is determined, land owners are contacted and asked for participation in the project by hosting WTs on their land. Land owners receive incomes (royalty fees) from renting their land and usually receive a percentage of the gross income generated by the project, and extra compensations if roads or other infrastructure are built on their terrain. Depending on the landowner's participation [54], a wind farm redesign could be required. The legal, leasing and planning application processes are not straightforward and may take a significant amount of time. In addition, wind energy best practices for community engagement and public consultation encourage wind farm designers to develop community outreach programs. In this sense, a significant amount of money is spent during the wind farm design process even without any guarantee that the project can be built. (3) _Energy Regulatory Framework_. The energy regulations depend on the country where the project is to be developed. The wind farm designer must be aware of the legislation regarding the production, transmission, transformation and marketing of the electricity, which in turn define the potential profitability of the project. In addition, the wind farm designer must act in accordance with the local and national development plans and policies and the electricity market. (4) _Financing and Funding_. Once a complete design and organization is performed, the wind farm developer must have access to funds through banking institutions or special financial organizations. The acceptance/rejection of the funding will depend on several factors such as the results from the wind resource assessment, the Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) for the energy to be converted and supplied, the full planning permissions, feasibility studies, electrical interconnection and construction agreements, banking/economic climate and insurance against natural disasters among other factors [36]. In this sense, the uncertainty on the project revenue is one of the most important factors determining a successful financing. The present work focuses on describing in detail the approaches used to develop the second stage of the wind farm planning process, where technical and optimization challenges are commonly encountered.