Wind Farm Repowering: A Strategic Management Perspective

Sammanfattning: With an estimated wind turbine service life of 20-25 years, it is evident that in the coming years, an increasing number of wind farm owners will have to make a decision between decommissioning and repowering their wind farms. Even though repowering is underlined with a highly complex decision making process, a review of the literature suggests that it is mainly regarded as an engineering feat with a lack of discussion in the strategic and project management context. The objective of this thesis is to provide a framework that demonstrates the applicability of fundamental strategic and project management concepts on repowering and present a new perspective on this activity with a relatively short and promising history. In an effort to accomplish this, an extensive literature review analyzed different aspects of repowering through the lenses of strategic and project management. These concepts were then combined into the Repowering Strategic Project Management (RSPM) framework to guide the decision maker in selecting and implementing the optimal repowering strategy by establishing a repowering project early in the existing wind farm’s operational life. The RSPM framework presents a step-by-step guidance tool that demonstrates the process from envisioning an optimal end of service life (EOSL) solution to the repowering execution. In an effort to verify its suitability, the framework has been implemented, demonstrating the wide range of aspects the decision maker has to take into consideration suggesting that an early development of the repowering strategy and its corresponding project could help the owner to repower the wind farm in the most time-efficient manner. Lastly, while the thesis did not emphasize the evaluation and selection of strategy, the implementation of the RSPM framework provided guidelines for these tasks.