Economic Analysis of the Stability in the Wind Turbine Selection

Selection of wind turbine is one of the main factors which affect the economics of wind power projects. The current domestic economic analysis of wind turbine selection are relatively backward and the evaluation indexes are imperfect- -major concerned indicators are theoretic indicators such as characteristics of wind turbine and rated generating capacity, lacking of the assessment of actual wind turbine operation stability and reliability. In fact, due to the immaturity of China´s wind power technology, the stability between the different units varies widely. This will undoubtedly impacts on the economy of the wind turbine selection. In this paper, a new indicator for economic analysis of wind turbine selection is proposed, to study the effects of unit operation stability to the generating capacity and the operation and maintenance cost, and the Relative Difference Ratio (RDR) is used to estimate the operation and maintenance expenses between different units. Case study shows that this method is scientific and effective to evaluate the impact of the unit stability to the wind turbine selection economy.