Project Lead: Fraser Nash
Sector: Renewables
Project Summary
The project addresses the growing challenge of offshore wind farm turbine-layout optimisation, where developers must determine turbine locations that maximise energy generation while accounting for wake effects, engineering constraints, and site-specific requirements. As wind farms increase in size, the number of possible layouts grows rapidly, making optimisation increasingly difficult with conventional methods.
The team will investigate hybrid quantum-classical optimisation workflows, building on a previous SparQ proof-of-concept. The approach combines classical engineering models with quantum optimisation and will be evaluated using PT-2 and next-generation PT-3 photonic quantum computing platforms, together with the JIJ Zept optimisation framework. Performance will be benchmarked against established classical optimisation approaches.
Expected outcomes include evidence of how well quantum optimisation scales to realistic offshore wind problems, identification of problem classes where quantum methods offer advantages, and guidance on the future adoption of quantum computing within offshore wind design workflows.
