Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/74402 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
EWI Working Paper No. 11/05
Publisher: 
Institute of Energy Economics at the University of Cologne (EWI), Köln
Abstract: 
The investment decision on the placement of wind turbines is, neglecting legal formalities, mainly driven by the aim to maximize the expected annual energy production of single turbines. The result is a concentration of wind farms at locations with high average wind speed. While this strategy may be optimal for single investors maximizing their own return on investment, the resulting overall allocation of wind turbines may be unfavorable for energy suppliers and the economy because of large fluctuations in the overall wind power output. This paper investigates to what extent optimal allocation of wind farms in Germany can reduce these fluctuations. We analyze stochastic dependencies of wind speed for a large data set of German on- and offshore weather stations and find that these dependencies turn out to be highly nonlinear but constant over time. Using copula theory we determine the value at risk of energy production for given allocation sets of wind farms and derive optimal allocation plans. We find that the optimized allocation of wind farms may substantially stabilize the overall wind energy supply on daily as well as hourly frequency.
Subjects: 
Wind power
Vine copula
Optimal turbine allocation
JEL: 
C32
C53
Q42
Q47
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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