Scenario Analysis of Offshore Wind-Power Systems under Uncertainty

Abstract

Wind-energy systems are strongly affected by uncertainty and variability. Therefore, uncertainty sources should be considered during the economic evaluation of this type of system. In the literature, a framework for the economic performance assessment of wind-power systems has been proposed. Furthermore, in another contribution, the random discontinuities of political and regulatory scenarios have been included by using scenario analysis. However, the implemented models neglected the uncertainty related to disruptive events and the effect of climate change on the wind resource. To fill this gap, in this paper, climate change and disruptive events are included in a new model for evaluating the economic performance of wind turbine systems using scenario analysis. Analysis of a numerical example has been carried out to show the framework’s capabilities and to evaluate the effects of the added issues. The main results confirm previous findings on the necessity of including regulatory and political risks to achieve a proper economic evaluation. Additionally, they show that disruptive events increase the variability of the expected value of the Net Present Value (NPV). Therefore, even though climate change is expected to increase wind producibility in the numerical example location, the inclusion of disruptive events constrains the NPV growth.