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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

windfarmGA 5.0.0

CRAN release: 2026-09-14

Breaking release: layouts are n unique grid-cell IDs, not a 0/1 string.

Breaking

  • Genome is n cell IDs. The loop is selection → set_crossover → swap_mutation → get_grids → fitness. trimton is not in the loop. selection() returns an ID matrix; pipe it into set_crossover(), not the old binary crossover().
  • Public API is snake_case: area, wind, rotor, mutation_rate, selection_mode, crs. plotit is now plot. Unused loop args crossPart1 and trimForce are gone. Invalid selection_mode errors (no interactive prompt).
  • Defaults that change a run: selection_mode = "VAR", mutation 2/n (was often 0.8), n_elite = 3. Session options (inject, immigrants, seasons, local search) also change search behaviour.
  • Legacy crossover(), mutation() and trimton() still accept 0/1 chromosomes. New exports: set_crossover(), swap_mutation().
  • plot_fitness_evolution() is gone (it only called plot_parkfitness()).

New

  • Results have class windfarmGA (print / plot). ga_options() lists or sets options(windfarmGA.*).
  • explore_result(): Shiny map of a generation, wind rose, downwind wake cones, optional terrain layers + turbine popups. Click a new fitness max to jump the slider.
  • Fitness is (E (/100)^w) (windfarmGA.fitness_efficiency_weight, default 1). Log hub-height profile (power law via windfarmGA.wind_profile = "power"). Optional manufacturer curve (ga_options(power_curve = …), read_power_curve(), plot_power_curve()). Cp default 0.45; optional cut-in / rated / cut-out.
  • Elitism archives the best layout (no fitness × 10). Elite children, neighbour local search, fitness cache, immigrants, spatial crossover. Early stop only after stall_generations idle gens (no new layout, cell, or best).
  • Terrain: pass a DEM (terrain = dem) to skip the download. Per-cell height / (z_0) / (k) / air density are computed once and stored as terrainModel for plot_result and random_search.
  • random_search() jitters turbines inside their cells (runs). Terrain is reused from result; pass weibull_src again (not stored). plot_random_search() draws both panels on the same grid.
  • Wake search and circle overlap run in C++. Turbines exactly upwind (alpha = 0) are kept (old triangle test dropped them).
  • Wind helpers: wind_from_uv(), wind_from_series(). GitHub-only extras in experimental/ (ERA5/GWA, noise, rayshader, mapgl) are not in the CRAN tarball. plot_mapgl_from_result() reuses terrain_tiles/ / terrain.mbtiles, draws wake cones colored by AbschGesamt (0% green → max red) and the rayshader OBJ (wind_turbine_v1.obj). Three.js is r149 UMD from localhost. TileJSON Terrarium encoding; maxzoom is the highest tile folder. Basemaps: satellite, topo, Carto. Port 8000 leftover servers are freed (rebuild = TRUE remakes the tiles).
  • Plots wait for Enter between pages when interactive. plot_generation() shows every layout in a generation. plot_viewshed() projects lon/lat DEMs first.
  • genetic_algorithm(on_generation = ...) calls function(generation, iteration, energy, efficiency, fitness) after each generation so a Shiny app can show progress without forking the GA. wake_cones() is the public name for the downwind search-cone polygons (plot_leaflet, MapGL). Internal geometry is wake_cone_polys().

Fixes

  • Weibull speed no longer becomes all-NA after masking (fitness crash).
  • Power-curve energy is the park sum, not the first turbine.
  • clc_legend.csv is in the tarball again (.Rbuildignore had dropped every CSV).
  • crossover parent fitness is (a + b) / 2. isSpatial uses the given CRS, not hardcoded 3035.
  • plot_windrose() works with ggplot2 4.x (S7). If ggplot2 4 meets an old systemfonts, update systemfonts.
  • Parallel clusters always stop via on.exit.
  • plot_result(terrain = dem) no longer errors on a SpatRaster. Weibull file paths get a CRS before crop. PROJ < 6 branches are gone.
  • with_mocked_bindings() in test_coverage_branches.R wraps the ggplot2-missing checks in code = { … } (testthat requires named bindings). random_search() test uses runs, not the removed n.
  • resultrect is the first 50 generations of the old 200-iteration run, saved with xz (~90 KB). A new 50-gen GA is larger because allCoords now stores a bigger population.
  • plot_cell_heatmap() / ga_result_grid() no longer assume a missing CRS is lon/lat. Meter coordinates get the result projection (same as plot_leaflet()). The 4326 round-trip broke the grid on macOS.
  • Roxygen: unused @inheritParams on trimton() and turbine_influences() removed (params were already documented).
  • Rd help is ASCII-only (≈, ×, em-dash broke the CRAN PDF manual). README no longer links to the archived check-results page (404).
  • Parallel: n_cluster is capped at 2 under _R_CHECK_LIMIT_CORES_ (R errors on makeCluster(detectCores() - 1)). Terrain tests no longer need a local g100_06.tif.
  • random_search_single(turbine = …) skips the interactive prompt. User-input tests no longer write to a fake stdin.
  • stopCluster() is wrapped in try() so a dead worker does not fail the run. Live parallel GA tests skip under covr. Time sequential vs PSOCK locally with source("experimental/bench_parallel.R"); bench_parallel(). Windows starts PSOCK workers sequentially; fitness() loads windfarmGA/terra/sf on the workers. The bench catches dropped connections (often at 6–8 workers on this small site). README notes ~4 workers as the useful default on the demo site.
  • calculate_energy() uses its public arguments (layout, area, wind, …) instead of internal aliases. Unused maxt0 in the GA first-generation fuzzy block is gone.
  • windata_format() column matching used a broken sapply(grepl, …) (--run-donttest example). Frames that already have ws/wd skip the matcher (so probab no longer triggers it).

windfarmGA 4.0.0

CRAN release: 2025-01-18

  • Depends on R 4.1.0
  • Removed package dependencies rgdal and rgeos
  • Replaced dependency raster with terra
  • Moved dependencies foreach, parallel, doParallel, elevatr to Suggests
  • 3D-circle intersection calculation. Especially relevant if the terrain model is activated.
  • Fix grid_area and hexa_area functions for sf-1.0 and s2
  • Removed most visibility functions in favor of terra::viewshed
  • Removed the function windfarmGA, as it was redundant and just difficult to test.
  • Changed most cat() and print() calls with message()
  • Reset old par settings

windfarmGA 3.0.0

CRAN release: 2021-05-05

  • The dependencies sp, spatstat were removed and replaced by sf. All spatial outputs are now Simple Features. A Shapefile Polygon can still be passed as input to genetic_algorithm / windfarmGA, but more underlying functions now require the Polygon to be of type Simple Feature.
  • The functions grid_area & hexa_area are now calculated with sf::st_make_grid.
  • The new dependency elevatr has been added because it provides elevation data with a higher resolution compared to raster::getData.
  • Several dependencies that are not essential for the algorithm were moved to Suggests.
  • Bugfix for the calculation of the visibility analysis. #17
  • The viewshed parameter h1 can now also be a numeric vector with different height offsets. #18
  • The grid_area argument resol changed to size.
  • The arguments for get_dist_angles have changed to match the arguments of turbine_influences.

windfarmGA 2.3.0

CRAN release: 2020-10-20

  • Due to the changes in the PROJ 6 library and its handling of coordinate reference systems, some adjustments were necessary. Attempts were made to ensure backward compatibility. However, warnings like the following are now increasingly displayed:

    Warning message:
In showSRID(uprojargs, format = "PROJ", multiline = "NO", prefer_proj = prefer_proj) :
  Discarded datum European_Terrestrial_Reference_System_1989 in CRS definition

windfarmGA 2.2.3

CRAN release: 2019-12-16

  • Fix tests for R 3.4.0, as class(matrix) is of length 2.

  • Expose more options which can be set with options(windfarmGA.cT = 0.75):

    Options = Default value Description
    windfarmGA.cT = 0.88 Wind Turbine Thrust coefficient
    windfarmGA.air_rh = 1.225 Air Density Value
    windfarmGA.k = 0.075 Wake expansion coefficient. It is assumed to be 0.075 for onshore windfarms and 0.05 for offshore windfarms
    windfarmGA.max_angle = 20 Maximum angle (in degrees) to search for potentially influencing turbines
    windfarmGA.max_distance = 100000 Maximum distance (in meters) to search for potentially influencing turbines
    windfarmGA.max_population = 300 Maximum number of individuals per generation
    windfarmGA.max_selection = 100 Maximum number of selected individuals

windfarmGA 2.2.2

CRAN release: 2019-08-27

Pkgdown
Renaming Functions

  • Almost all functions have been renamed to have a consistent appearance and a clearer meaning. The old functions still exist, but are deprecated now.

    Renaming Overview

    Old names New names
    StartGA init_population
    selection1 selection
    crossover1 crossover
    VekWinkelCalc get_dist_angles
    calculateEn calculate_energy
    getRects get_grids
    BaroHoehe barometric_height
    GridFilter grid_area
    HexaTex hexa_area
    InfluPoints turbine_influences
    genAlgo genetic_algorithm
    RandomSearch random_search
    RandomSearchTurb random_search_single
    RandomSearchPlot plot_random_search
    leafPlot plot_leaflet
    heatmapGA plot_heatmap
    plotbeorwor plot_development
    plotCloud plot_cloud
    plotEvolution plot_evolution
    plotfitnessevolution plot_fitness_evolution
    plotparkfitness plot_parkfitness
    plotResult plot_result
    PlotWindfarmGA plot_windfarmGA
    plotWindrose plot_windrose
Bugfixes / Other Changes

  • The legend of plot_leaflet now works correctly.

  • Some general linting / spell checking / performance optimization was done.

  • The Weibull Raster (for Austria) are now in a separate Github-repository, instead of being stored in the package as .rda file. I guess this never worked except on my computer.

  • The Corine Land Cover .tif file is also stored in that repository, as the EEA webpage did restrict downloads sometimes, which resulted in an error.

  • The plot_farm_3d function has temporarily been removed from the package.

  • Most functions that required user-input previously used readline which is now changed to readLines as it allows to read from a file instead. This can be set via options(windfarmGA.connection = file()).

  • A whole lot of tests were written.

windfarmGA 2.2.1

CRAN release: 2019-02-18

Performance Tuning / Restructuring
  • Switch to matrices instead of data.frames and a lot of restructuring and performance optimization of the whole algorithm.
Viewshed Analysis
  • New set of functions, to analyze the visual impact of a wind farm.
    • cansee,
    • viewTo,
    • rasterprofile,
    • viewshed,
    • plot_viewshed,
    • interpol_view,
    • getISO3,
    • getDEM
Other Changes

  • The function genAlgo/windfarmGA and the plotting functions now accept SimpleFeature Polygons or coordinates in table format with long, lat or x, y column names. The terrain effect model can now be activated only by setting terrain to TRUE and it will attempt to download the land cover raster from the European Environment Agency website.

  • plot_farm_3d Experimental rayshader function

windfarmGA 1.2.1

CRAN release: 2018-03-25

Randomization

The output of genAlgo or windfarmGA can be further randomized/optimized with the following functions: - RandomSearch - RandomSearchTurb

RandomSearch is used to randomize all turbines of the layout

RandomSearchTurb is used to randomize a single turbine

RandomSearchPlot is used to plot the output of those functions, comparing them with the original result.

load(file = system.file("extdata/resultrect.rda", package = "windfarmGA"))
load(file = system.file("extdata/polygon.rda", package = "windfarmGA"))
Res = RandomSearchTurb(result = resultrect, area = polygon, n=10)
RandomSearchPlot(resultRS = Res, result = resultrect, area = polygon, best=2)

windfarmGA 1.2

CRAN release: 2018-03-11

parallel Processing
## Runs the same optimization, but with parallel processing and 3 cores.
result_par <- genAlgo(area = area, grid_method ="h", n=12, Rotor=30,
                 fcr=5,iteration=10, wind = data.in,crossPart1 = "EQU",
                 selection_mode="FIX",mutation_rate=0.8, proportionality = 1,
                 surface_roughness = 0.3, terrain = FALSE,
                 elitism=TRUE, n_elite = 7, trimForce = TRUE,
                 reference_height = 50,rotor_height = 100,
                 parallel = TRUE, n_cluster = 3)
PlotWindfarmGA(result = result_par, grid_method = "h", area = area)

windfarmGA 1.1.0

Optimization with Hexagonal Grid Cells
result_hex <- genAlgo(area = area, grid_method ="h", n=12, Rotor=30,
                  fcr=5,iteration=10, wind = data.in,crossPart1 = "EQU",
                  selection_mode="FIX",mutation_rate=0.8, proportionality = 1,
                  surface_roughness = 0.3, terrain = FALSE,
                  elitism=TRUE, n_elite = 7, trimForce = TRUE,
                  reference_height = 50,rotor_height = 100)
PlotWindfarmGA(result = result_hex, grid_method = "h", area = area)

windfarmGA 1.0.0

Initial release