Economics of Offshore Wind Farms

Most of the factors affecting the costs associated with the different phases of the lifecycle of offshore wind projects are site-specific, complex, interrelated, and dynamic. This situation complicates the decision making process when trying to compare among various alternatives for a given situation.

Systems thinking is an interdisciplinary field focusing on how the interaction of subsystems in complex projects, such as offshore wind farms, affect the overall performance over their lifecycles, including design, development, testing, production, construction, management, operation and decommissioning. This field overlaps disciplines such as industrial engineering, manufacturing engineering, logistics, finance, and project management, among others.

Learning Goals:

  • Translate offshore wind specific situations into measurable requirements and use computer-based modelling of systems integration to create and evaluate different scenarios
  • Develop financial models to analyse risks over the lifecycle of offshore wind farms
  • Calculate the impact of changing parameters in the different scenarios and provide estimations of the time and costs to be incurred in each of them
  • Explain how the different components of an offshore wind farm system interrelates, and how each of them contributes to the project’s success
  • The skills to be developed are aimed at increasing the predictability in the economic effects that a decision will have in the overall lifecycle of a project
  • Approach different stakeholders to understand their needs, examine all feasible alternatives before selecting a solution and participate in multidisciplinary teams to produce models that are robust, high quality, supportable, cost effective, and responsive
  • Identify and evaluate the importance of the relationships of the factors leading to the complexity of an offshore wind farm
  • Analyse the causes of a systems failure and make recommendations for improvements and solutions
  • provide support in, for example, the evaluation of new technologies, in finding the best strategies for the commissioning and operational phases, in evaluating new methods that can speed up harbour and vessel operations, in determining whether investments make economic sense

Lecturers:

Prof. Dr. Marita Balks

Professor at University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Berlin

Gunnar Herzig

Co-lecturer from WFO – World Forum Offshore Wind who will provide a business case

Downloads:

Course-Description_Offshore-Wind-Energy-MBA_Economics-of-Offshore-Wind-Farms_2022Download