Cash-flow analysis of a wind turbine operator

The intermittent characteristics of wind energy seriously affect the reliability and output power of wind turbine generator (WTG). The paper outlines a method to evaluate the distribution of WTG operator´s daily cash-flow by developing an algorithm based on Monte-Carlo technique. Two-parameter Weibull type probability density function (PDF) is used to model wind profile at two locations. WTG´s output is obtained by using power curve while also considering the availability factor derived from the Forced Outage Rate (FOR). The daily cash-flows were obtained by calculating the difference between the revenues from sales of power at feed-in-tariff and the cost of energy. The paper contributes towards a better understanding of wind profile´s effect on the expected energy production and the sensitivity of profit distribution to changes in feed-in tariff.