Abstract:
The proposed risk assessment tool quantifies economic, environmental, political, and societal risks in wind energy projects. The risks are quantified based on the measured data and document evidence. An important component of the proposed methodology includes converting different external risks into a common scale and these scales express the level of risk factors. A survey was conducted with the experts in order to determine the relative importance of external risks. Applicability of the proposed tool is tested on real time wind power plants that are located in Izmir Province on the Aegean coast of Turkey. Change in laws and regulations, environmental issues, local community, grid connection, land use and permits, and erroneous wind resource assessment appeared to be key risk factors. The findings of case studies showed that the perception of inadequate understanding of the potential risks can lead to significant revenue loss. The proposed method estimates each risk factor level separately and then aggregates them by calculating the Project Risk Score (PRS) which is linked to the normalized revenue loss. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.