Welsh windfarms operating costs
Operating costs vary widely - from £ 70,000 to £ 200,000 per year per installed MW
However, operating costs are rather standard across all windfarms: a) turbine maintenance b) lease payments for land c) site management d) insurance e) administrative services.
Why there is such a wide variation in these costs between windfarms is not clear.
There are two important key performance indicators for a windfarm.
The first measures the efficiency of daily operation: cost per MWh generated.
The second measures the efficiency of the equipment, capital cost per MWh.
However this is trickier to measure, because companies allocate the historical cost of fixed assets in equal amounts across their useful life.
And so, due to inflation, the amount allocated declines in real terms each year.
Accordingly the historical depreciation charge has been adjusted for inflation using the following table.
Putting the two KPIs together gives an indication of overall efficiency.