LSE Business Review:
Better location could lead to a 20-50% increase in wind farm profitability
19 April 2016
Wind power is becoming an increasingly important part of the US energy mix, taking up more than four per cent of the total electricity generation as of 2014 and growing by 25.8 per cent annually for the past decade. But have we been able to put the wind turbines in the right locations? It is widely acknowledged that the economic efficiency and environmental benefits of wind farms critically rely on proper siting. For instance, wind turbines should be located in places with strong and stable wind, reasonably good access to transmission lines and high demand for electricity. In my recent research, I look at the location efficiency of wind power projects across the continental US by comparing the current distribution of wind farms to an ideal profit-maximising scenario and investigate the factors that might contribute to it.
This article was published by the LSE Business Review blog on April 19, 2016
Link to article here
Related publications
'Where Does the Wind Blow? Green preferences and spatial misallocation in the renewable energy sector', Yatang Lin,forthcoming Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper No.1424, April 2016.