The popularity of wind energy is increasing day by day. If we look at the past 18 years, we can easily see that there is an average annual growth rate of more than 25 percent in terms of number of wind power plant projects realised within a year.
After the increase in fuel prices within past two years and improvoments in turbine technology, wind energy became more populer and competitive among other energy sources such as coal and natural gas. It is a fact that competitiveness of wind energy against other sources varies according to wind regime of a certain location.
Apart from that, for the turbine technology and assembly methods are too different for offshore projects, we have to analyse the economics of onshore wind projects and offshore wind projects seperately.
According to EWEA’s Wind Energy – The Facts document published on 13.02.2009, average investment cost of an installed onshore turbine differs significantly between countries in Europe, from around €1 million/MW to €1,35 million/MW. These costs include not only mechanical installation costs, but also all additional costs for foundations, electrical installation and consultancy.
According to EWEA’s study, the cost structue of a typical 2 MW onshore wind turbine installed in Europe, is as follows:
- Turbine (ex Works) : 75,6 %
- Foundations : 6,5 %
- Electric Installation :1,5 %
- Grid Connection : 8,9 %
- Control Systems : 0,3 %
- Consultancy : 1,2 %
- Land : 3,9 %
- Financial Costs : 1,2 %
- Road : 0,9 %
One of the important things that have to be pointed out is that, this cost structure is sensitive to global demand for wind turbines. As the global demand increases, price of turbines and their share in cost structure increase with rising supply constraints.
On the other hand, average investment cost of an installed offshore turbine differs significantly between countries in Europe, from around €2 million/MW to €2,2 million/MW today. The reason why investment cost of offshore turbines are higher is that foundations, transformer stations and transmission cables of offshore turbines are more expensive.
Although turbines are becoming taller and technology of turbines advance, investment costs of turbines are expected to decrease by 10% by 2015 and it is obivous that these developments are going to increase demand wind energy solutions in near future.
A.Yigit NEPHAN
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