Simulating wind farm development

Engineers have devised a model to describe how, in the process of establishing wind farms, interactions between developers and landowners affect energy production costs. Wind farms are large, highly technical projects but their development often relies on personal decisions made by individual landowners and small communities. Recognizing the power of the human element in wind farm planning, Stanford University researchers have devised a model that considers how interactions between developers and landowners affect the success and cost of wind farms. "I've been doing work on the costs of wind farms for about 10 years and I've found that the soft costs - basically the cost interactions between people - are overlooked," said Erin MacDonald , assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford. "Existing models can tell us how to eke out a little more value by making a blade turn in a slightly different way but aren't focused on the reasons why a community accepts or rejects a wind farm." In a paper , published June 19 in the Journal of Mechanical Design , the researchers present a model that highlights three actions developers could take during this process of landowner acquisition - community engagement meetings, preliminary environmental studies and sharing plans for wind turbine layout with the landowner - and investigates how those actions would affect the eventual cost of the wind farm. The cost analysis suggests that these actions, while contributing to upfront costs, may end up saving developers money in the long run.