Costs and feasibility of repowering wind farms Castro-Santos, Laura; Vizoso, Almudena Filgueira; Camacho, Eugenio Muñoz ...
Energy sources. Part B, Economics, planning and policy,
01/2016, Volume:
11, Issue:
10
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The aim of this paper is to determine the main costs and the feasibility of repowering wind farms. For this purpose, two study methods, which depend on legal and wind turbines issues, have been ...considered. They will provide nine alternatives, whose study will be developed. The methodology has been applied to the particular case of Galicia (North-West of Spain), where there is a good onshore wind resource. Calculations indicate the costs, the Net Present Value (NPV), the Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and the Pay-Back Period of these alternatives. In addition, a sensitivity study has analyzed the main variables of dependence in repowering wind farms. Results show that repowering can be a new alternative for onshore wind farms in areas where old wind turbines are currently installed.
The aim of this work is to describe several experiences of STEMbach in different areas: engineering, economics, materials, etc. The STEMbach is a program carried out by high school students during ...their two years of study to obtain their High School Diploma (equivalent to A-levels), designed for both the Humanities and Sciences modalities, and created alongside the Galician strategy for digital education. It encourages the vocation of the scholars towards scientific and technological research and allows a connection directly with the college education. The STEM works explained in this work were developed between the University of A Coruña and several high schools located in the region of Galicia (North-West of Spain). Results were very constructive for promoting STEM careers.
This paper presents an alternative to the materials traditionally used in the manufacture of coal mills for coating wedges. For this purpose, we designed and tested ten new austenitic steels with ...medium manganese content. The thermal structural stability and hardness were evaluated after different heat treatments. The steels were subjected to hyperquenching and tempering between 100 and 900 °C. A metallographic analysis of each sample was then performed to determine their thermal stability, and the Brinell hardness was measured. Later, wedges of two alternatives and reference-material alloys were manufactured and installed in three types of mills. Their mass loss was determined after 25 months and at an intermediate time during that period. One steel was selected as an alternative material.
The objective of the present work is to develop a sensitivity analysis to determine the most essential parameters that affects to the economic feasibility of a marine wind farm composed by platforms ...built in concrete material. The main purpose is to analyze how the input variables such as number of offshore wind turbines, the energy produced by one wind turbine, the interest rate, the capital cost, the electric tariff, etc. affect to the economic output variables: the Levelized Cost Of Energy (LCOE), the Internal Rate of Return (IRR), the Net Present Value (NPV) and the Discounted Pay-Back Period (DPBP) of the considered offshore wind farm. This paper studies the concrete floating offshore wind platform SATH®, developed by the SAITEC enterprise. Results indicate what are the most relevant variables in economic terms to take them into consideration for their installation in the future.
The goal of this work is to carry out an economic analysis of a novel floating offshore wind structure, of which the main material is concrete: the SATH® platform. It takes a step forward in floating ...marine wind energy research, in which traditional platforms are mainly composed of steel. The technique to calculate the costs of the platform and the economic parameters to decide if the farm is economically feasible are explained in the paper. This case study analyzes a possible farm of 500 MW located in Portugal and several scenarios considering different electric tariffs and capital costs (Scenario 1: electric tariff of 50 €/MWh and 6% of capital cost; Scenario 2: electric tariff of 50 €/MWh and 8% of capital cost; Scenario 3: electric tariff of 150 €/MWh and 6% of capital cost; Scenario 4: electric tariff of 150 €/MWh and 8% of capital cost). Results show the economic feasibility of a farm with the characteristics of Scenarios 3 and 4. This work is significant in order to provide a new approach to analyzing traditional floating offshore wind structures, which can represent a path towards the future of floating offshore renewable energy technologies.
The aim of this work is to develop a software to calculate the economic parameters so as to determine the feasibility of a floating offshore renewable farm in a selected location. The software can ...calculate the economic parameters of several types of offshore renewable energies, as follows: one renewable energy (floating offshore wind-WindFloat, tension leg platform (TLP), and spar; floating wave energy-Pelamis and AquaBuoy), hybrid offshore wind and wave systems (Wave Dragon and W2Power), and combined offshore wind and waves with different systems (independent arrays, peripherally distributed arrays, uniformly distributed arrays, and non-uniformly distributed arrays). The user can select several inputs, such as the location, configuration of the farm, type of floating offshore platform, type of power of the farm, life-cycle of the farm, electric tariff, capital cost, corporate tax, steel cost, percentage of financing, or interest and capacity of the shipyard. The case study is focused on the Galicia region (NW of Spain). The results indicate the economic feasibility of a farm of floating offshore renewable energy in a particular location in terms of its costs, levelized cost of energy (LCOE), internal rate of return (IRR), net present value (NPV), and discounted pay-back period. The tool allows for establishing conclusions about the dependence of the offshore wind resource parameters, the main distances (farm-shore, farm-shipyard, and farm-port), the parameters of the waves, and the bathymetry of the area selected.
This paper defines a methodology for the economic feasibility analysis of a floating offshore wind farm composed of tensioned leg platforms, which are part of the EU ARCWIND research project. In this ...context, the phases and subphases of its life-cycle process are considered to deal with aspects such as bathymetry, characteristics of the platforms, distance from the farm to shore, distance from the farm to port and offshore wind speed. All the costs and other external parameters such as capital cost, electric tariff, interest rate, percentage of financing and corporate tax have been analysed to calculate the internal rate of return, net present value, discounted pay-back period and levelized cost of energy of the farm. This work studies a farm composed of TLP offshore wind platforms designed by CENTEC and located at Ribadeo in Spain. Results indicate the costs and the economic feasibility of this platform for deep waters. They indicate that the platform is economically feasible for the location selected.
Light emitting diode (LED) and compact fluorescent light (CFL) lamps are widely used because they are associated with low energy consumption and a reduced environmental impact. In the present paper, ...a study of the real consumption of these devices has been carried out. To do this, the active, reactive, distortion and apparent power and electrical efficiency for various lamps have been measured and calculated. The distortions produced in the network provoke the consumed energy to be in the order of 50–75% higher than that which appears in the commercial characteristics. This situation means that for its operation, it is necessary to generate and distribute an amount of energy much higher than that which is declared as the consumption of these lamps, and so far, this amount of energy is neither quantified nor invoiced. Additionally, groups of lamps have also been studied to check whether, when working together on the same network, there is a compensation phenomenon that reduces the negative effects of individual lamps. We have found that this compensation effect does not occur for the type of devices evaluated.
The objective of this work is to establish a framework for the development of an economic analysis tool for floating offshore wind platforms built in concrete. The operation and usefulness of the ...beta version of a software, called Arcwind, is explained. It calculates the main economic aspects of offshore wind platforms built in concrete considering different locations in the European Atlantic Arc. This software allows the user to select different input parameters such as: the type of platform, the installation area of the farm, its specific location and in this way create different analysis scenarios. This paper analyzes the case study to install TELWIND® offshore concrete floating platforms in the Canary Islands, in Spain. The software provides data on the main economic parameters of the farm, such as Levelized Cost Of Energy (LCOE), Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Pay-Back Period (PBP), as well as the main costs: cost of conception and definition, cost of design and development, cost of manufacturing, cost of installation, cost of operation and cost of dismantling. Using these parameters, a first analysis of the viability of this type of floating technology built on concrete is shown.
The aim of this study is to develop a methodology for using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) spatial analysis in the development of a floating offshore wind farm. When you plan a floating ...offshore wind farm it is very important to determine the areas where wind resource is high, which will produce good economic results in terms of the feasibility of the farm. However, the present paper analyses how some restrictions (environmental areas, navigation restricted areas, depth, ports, shipyards, etc.) affect to the floating offshore wind farm. The tool developed allows increasing the quantity of these restrictions as the user needs. The procedure has been considered for the Galician area (North-West of Spain), a region that has experience in onshore wind. Therefore, the GIS tool analyses the site selection for a floating offshore wind farm.
•GIS tool analyses the site selection for a floating offshore wind farm.•Determine the areas.•Restrictions affect to the floating offshore wind farm.•You can select the quantity of restrictions.•The Galician area (North-West of Spain) has studied.
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