  With the development of offshore wind farms (OWFs) in far-offshore and
deep-sea areas, each OWF could contain more and more wind turbines and cables,
making it imperative to study high-reliability electrical collector system
(ECS) for OWF. Enlightened by active distribution network, for OWF, we propose
an ECS switch configuration that enables post-fault network recovery, along
with a reliability assessment (RA) method based on optimization models. It can
also determine the optimal normal state and network reconfiguration strategies
to maximize ECS reliability. Case studies on several OWFs demonstrate that the
proposed RA method is more computationally efficient and accurate than the
traditional sequential Monte-Carlo simulation method. Moreover, the proposed
switch configuration, in conjunction with the network reconfiguration strategy
and proper topology, provides significant benefits to ECS reliability.
