WEP. A wind energy planning system. User's manual

The report describes the Wind Energy Planning system (WEP). It is intended as a decision support system to be used in the economic evaluation of wind energy projects. Such projects could be minor projects with only a single wind turbine or large wind farm projects consisting of several wind turbine plants. In the WEP system, a wind turbine is described by data on initial investment, possible later reinvestments, O&M costs, expected yearly production, life time, and capacity factor. The raising of loans are modelled, too. Depending on which output report is created, the value of the wind generated electricity is calculated in two different ways: either the electricity is assumed to be sold at a price (time series) given by the user, or the alternative conventional power production is modelled by its specific investment, O&M costs, life time, effectivity, fuel mix, and time series for fuel prices. Using these data, capacity credit and saved fuel and O&M costs are calculated. Due to the flexible data structure of the model, the user can easily create a scenario that models a large scale introduction of wind power. In such a scenario the gradual build up through several years of the wind power capacity can be modelled. The report describes in detail the menu structure, the input facilities, the output reports, and the organization of data. Also included is an example with full input documentation and output reports.