The only question that needs to be asked is:
"Did these turbines generate more income in electricity over their life times than it cost to build?"
All other questions are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if the main bearings broke so long as they broke after the system is profitable.
14 years generating electricity is a good long time to break even and maybe even put some money in the investor's pockets.
There's more to life than a quick profit. When you start looking at profit alone it becomes a race to the bottom (look at what happened to computer games and movies since the 90s)
You'd want to consider the cost and impact of disposing of the behemoth remnants, and whether the energy spent producing them was ever recouped over such a short lifespan.
There's more to life than a quick profit.
We aren't talking about life here. We are talking about business.
You'd want to consider the cost and impact of disposing of the behemoth remnants, and whether the energy spent producing them was ever recouped over such a short lifespan.
Exactly. TCO, Total Cost of Ownership. From birth to death of the windmill. Did the windmill generate more than TCO? That's the only question we need to be asking here. Even if it only generated $0.01 more than TCO, then it was worth it.
Let's say the expected lifetime of windmill is 10 years. An investor looking to diversify his portfolio is going to look at this windmill, then he's going to look at the 10 year government bond, then he's going to compare the two. A 10 year government bond has around 2% - 6% interest. So, if the windmill is generating at least 102% 106% profit over TCO, then it's a good deal.
Are there better deals out there? Yeah, but that's the thing about diversified portfolios. You aren't going to cram in all the highest performing investments in the portfolio. It's good to have a few conservative performing investments.
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