Author: Francesco Miceli
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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…
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Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Compliance for Temporary Wind Turbine Lighting
I’ve been contacted by Mr Stewart Erwin who asked me to incorporate his article. I think it’s interesting (even if it’s focused only in the US market) and on topic. It was originally published on LinkedIn. Mr Erwin works for Carmanah – feel free to contact him for more info. (Beguinning guest post) There are…
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Trenchers in a wind farm: do they make sense?
In a nutshell, the answer is yes – at least if you are able to find one nearby at a reasonable price. In general, you will have several alternatives to dig your cable trenches: Backhoe Backhoe with hydraulic breaker hammer Explosives Trencher The smarter choice will depend on the hardness of the rock. In general, the…
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Cost drivers in Electrical Balance of Plant
Due to my education as a Civil Engineer there I already wrote a substantial number of posts regarding cost of the civil BoP. However I do not want to neglect the electrical side, which as you might already know is usually accountable for approximately 50% of the total cost of the balance of plant of…