A Strategic Approach to Risk-Based Wind Development
Investing in a wind farm is an expensive business and can seem to be too risky for more cautious fund holders. Investors are more likely to be interested if it is possible for them to make a better informed decision on the projected financial returns. In particular, the estimate of how much energy the farm is likely to produce is critical to the final funding decision. The well-understood problem here is that energy production can only ever be an estimate during the planning phase, but how certain is that estimate? A new model makes it possible to be much more precise about the level of uncertainty and this should allow potential partners to define, and act on, the comfort zone within which they are prepared to work.
By Matthew Hendrickson, Vice President of Energy Assessment, and Francesca Davidson, Marketing Manager, Vaisala Inc. (formerly 3TIER), USA