  Existing planning approaches for onshore wind farm siting and grid
integration often do not meet minimum cost solutions or social and
environmental considerations. In this paper, we develop an exact approach for
the integrated layout and cable routing problem of onshore wind farm planning
using the Quota Steiner tree problem. Applying a novel transformation on a
known directed cut formulation, reduction techniques, and heuristics, we design
an exact solver that makes large problem instances solvable and outperforms
generic MIP solvers. In selected regions of Germany, the trade-offs between
minimizing costs and landscape impact of onshore wind farm siting are
investigated. Although our case studies show large trade-offs between the
objective criteria of cost and landscape impact, small burdens on one criterion
can significantly improve the other criteria. In addition, we demonstrate that
contrary to many approaches for exclusive turbine siting, grid integration must
be simultaneously optimized to avoid excessive costs or landscape impacts in
the course of a wind farm project. Our novel problem formulation and the
developed solver can assist planners in decision-making and help optimize wind
farms in large regions in the future.
