Spatial-Economic Potential Analysis of Wind Power Plants in Germany

Abstract

Before a new wind farm can be built, politics and regional planning must approve of the respective area as a suitable site. For this purpose, large-scale potential computations were carried out to identify suitable areas. The calculation of wind power plant potential usually focuses on capturing the highest energy potential. In Germany, due to an energy production reimbursement factor defined in the Renewable Energy Sources Act (“Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz”, EEG) in 2017, the influence of energy quantities on the power plant potential varies, economically and spatially. Therefore, in addition to the calculation of energy potentials, it was also necessary to perform a potential analysis in terms of economic efficiency. This allows, on the one hand, an economic review of the areas tendered by the regional planning and, on the other hand, a spatial-economic analysis that expands the parameters in the search for new areas. In this work, (a) potentials with regard to the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) were calculated by the example of the electricity market in Germany, which were then (b) spatially and statistically processed on the level of the federal states.