Risk Identification, Analysis & Response Planning of a Typical Wind Power Project in Greece

Abstract: The wind power development in Greece has been rising the last decade, aiming to exploit the country's excellent wind resources. Though the project developers' experience in the wind energy industry has been expanded, wind power project risks are always present, having the potential to have a major impact on the project outcome. Thereafter, the question generated is “which are those risks, and how can they effectively be addressed?”. This Thesis is aiming to identify those risks, specifically for the Greek wind energy sector, present the results of a quantitative risk analysis, and propose risk response strategies for each of the identified risks. For that purpose, a case-study in S. Euboea region was applied; a typical 8 MW onshore wind farm was designed inside a Wind Priority Area. The risk data were collected by a panel of experts, chosen to identify and quantify the potential risks through the implementation of the Delphi and the Project Risk FMEA (RFMEA) methods. The results showed 21 risks that should be considered when developing a wind power project in Greece, and also presented their response priority ranking, based on each risk's ratings inprobability, impact and detection factors. Afterwards, the risk response strategies, for each risk, were proposed, as those were collected by the experts panel group-interviewing. Through the analysis of the results, it is clarified that the country's economic crisis and the current changes in the political scene have created new and affected the already existing risks of the Greek wind energy sector, bringing the regulatory risk to the top of the critical risks.