Event tree-based risk and financial assessment for power plants

Abstract

Reliability and risk analyses in engineering have seldom been linked to financial analyses despite the significant role that risk assessment plays in the field of finance. Cash flow analyses for power plants typically do not account for contingent and successive events. Hence, the related financial assessments rarely incorporate a quantification of the adverse effects resulting from the combination of subsequent failures that could lead to extreme outcomes. The proposed approach aims to address this gap by employing the event tree method.The novel contribution lies in introducing an event tree-based method that enables a granular evaluation of the financial performance of power plants and can serve as a foundation for the development of a variety of sensitivity and optimization analyses. The method enhances the accuracy of financial performance estimates by specifically targeting the assessment of operation and maintenance costs. The results show the importance of an improved assessment of the expenses related to equipment failures, which are approximately one-third of the revenue and add up to around 380,000 EUR for the lifespan of а photovoltaic plant with an installed capacity of 1 MW.