An Economic Analysis of Wind Energy Harvest

Atamturk, Alper & Lai, Jane & Richartz, Leon & Li, Huijie & Gu, Kevin. (2009). An Economic Analysis of Wind Energy Harvest. 1 – 5. 10.1109/APPEEC.2009.4918131.

In this paper we develop a novel approach that simultaneously optimizes a wind farm and its financing for an improved economic analysis of wind energy projects. In our analysis we compare the energy yield of optimal wind energy projects with different turbine technologies under varying electricity price and wind speed scenarios. We perform extensive simulation studies and build statistical confidence intervals for the annual energy yield as well as the project’s net present value at risk. The proposed approach eliminates the need for a trial- and-error financial feasibility study and, consequently, improves the harvest of the wind energy.