Category: Economics
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The five most abusive prices I’ve seen in the last years
Having the opportunity of working at several project worldwide I already discovered that the idea of what is “cheap” or “expensive” may vary a lot depending on the country. Also, huge countries like Brazil or Chile may show a relevant price dispersion depending on the area (Patagonia or Atacama desert?). A third consideration is that,…
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Pareto principle in wind farm civil works price
Among the numerous fenomenous that follow a Pareto distribution (i.e., 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes) there is the price of civil works in wind farms. Through the years we’ve developed a really completed, exhaustive documentation for tenders. Our beautiful Bill of Quantities includes hundreds of items. However, how many of…
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Wind energy in 2012: key figures and market evolution
In this post I want to show some figures about the evolution of the wind sector worldwide, both on the demand and supply side, and what happened in 2012. From my point of view as Vestas employees the biggest new has been that GE is now the biggest wind turbine manufacturer. They now have a…
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Relevant parameters in wind farm production
After the connection of a Wind Farm to the grid several parameters are used to analyze the smooth operation of the installation. The more relevant are: Capacity Factor [latex size=”1″]CF=\left( \frac{E(kWh)}{P(kW) T(h)}\right )[/latex] Is a parameter used frequently in power producing plant. A high capacity factor means that the plant is working almost continuously (for…
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Wind Energy in Jordan
Together with the projects in Chile and Uruguay I’ve been involved lately in several wind farm developments in Jordan. Currently the country has a near-zero wind energy production, but due to his very strong dependency on energy import (more than 95% of the demand, absorbing about 13% of the GDP) committed to an ambitious plan…
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Wind Energy in Chile
After my trip to Uruguay I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Chile, another promising destination in South America. The country enjoys a high GDP growth, with controlled inflation and a stable regulatory framework, and it’s a place where several big players are betting. We are ending the construction of Talinay, a 90 MW EPC wind…
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Wind Energy in Uruguay
Uruguay is a small country (at least for South American standards) but it is intentioned to become a giant in wind power, somehow like Denmark in Europe. The country has an ambitious plan of reaching 1,2GW of installed wind power in the next 3 years: considering that present generation capacity is about 2,6GW the figure…
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Wind farm project financing
Project financing is a financial structure where debt providers rely on revenues generated by the wind farm to service and repay borrowing, and where the financing is secured by the project assets. It is a complex technique, that sees several parties involved in the project (equity, debt providers, power purchaser, land owner, WTG provider, etc.)…
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Economics of an onshore wind farm
The total cost of a wind farm is made of the sum of the following expenditures, in this chronological order: Feasibility study, including wind analysis, preliminary layout, environmental studies, economical models and so on. Technical/Juridical costs associated with the start up: power purchase agreement, legal permits, right of way with the landowners, etc. Engineering: civil…