Efficiency of Wind Power Production and its Determinants

Abstract

This article examines the efficiency of wind energy production. We quantify production losses in four wind parks across Germany for 19 wind turbines with non-convex efficiency analysis. In a second stage regression, we adapt the linear regression results of Kneip, Simar, Wilson (2014) to explain electricity losses by means of a bias-corrected truncated regression. Our results show that electricity losses amount to 27% of the maximal producible electricity. These losses can be mainly traced back to changing wind conditions while only 6 % are caused by turbine errors.