Author: Francesco Miceli
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Wind turbine towers – the bigger the better
It looks like the trend in the business is to go as high as possible. The places with the best wind conditions have been already used in the first 20 something years of the wind industry. Now it’s time to work with low wind sites – and probably, repower the older wind farms. I consider…
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Acronyms in wind farms construction
I’ve been informed by one of my most affectionate reader that some acronyms that I’m using in the blog are not immediately clear. Therefore I’ve started a first list of the most used ones – special thanks to Janos for helping expanding the list: AEP Annual energy production. BoP Balance of plant. All civil (roads,…
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Chinese wind turbines – are they coming?
Well, apparently the answer to this question is “not yet”. I’ve been through an interesting article from Bloomberg – the images of this post are taken from the same source. As you can see, in addition to a new reshuffle in the top 3 (Vestas up again, together with GE), there is another important piece…
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Wind site assessment
The wind site assessment (or “wind and site” assessment) is one of the most important steps in the development of a wind farm. Basically is a in depth analysis of the site conditions of the area where a wind farm could be built. Purpose of this assessment is calculate energy production and suitability of a…
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Land lease and site access: 5 usual mistakes
You would be surprised to discover the amount of problems that are generated by missing, uncomplete or wrongly defined land lease and site access agreement. Land lease contracts must be negotiated by the project company (that is, the developer of the wind farm) with the landowners. It’s extremely rare to have the whole wind farm…
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Split EPC contracts
As you probably will be aware of if you are reading this blog, an EPC is a typology of contract where a company agree to develop the engineering, procurement and construction of a facility (in this blog, a wind farm) for a fixed, “lump sum” amount. The key advantage of this type of contract is…
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More cranes CAD blocks (but you will have to pay)
I’ve just been contacted by these guys who run a store selling CAD block for few euros: https://custom3d.com/collections/cranes/ They have several blocks that you could find useful, including some 3D Liebherr blocks. Enjoy!
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Technical due diligence of a wind farm
It is a hard task to compress in a blog post the reasons behind the technical due diligence of a wind farm and the several points that must be evaluated. In a nutshell, in the clear majority of the wind farms developments are built using borrowed money. The equity (cash at risk) is put by…
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WTG tower – concrete or steel?
One of the key decision in a wind farm is the type of tower that will be used to reach the desired hub high. In the infancy of the wind industry, lattice towers where used – you can still see them in very old wind farm, for instance in southern Spain. However, this technology was…
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Ineffable concepts: bankability of a wind farm project
Wind energy, as probably all niche sector, is full of acronyms and hard to define terms. One of them is the “bankability” of an EPC project. In a nutshell, it express the idea that the lenders are fine with the development and are ready to put on the table a relevant percentage of the money…