IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/conmgt/v30y2012i8p609-622.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Contested overruns and performance of offshore wind power plants

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Koch

Abstract

Offshore wind power plants are expected to expand rapidly in the coming years. These large engineering construction projects are important for climate change mitigation. The paper contributes to socio-technical understanding of engineering construction. Cost, time, delays and performance results of selected British plants are investigated, with a focus on strategic misrepresentation. This megaproject concept is combined with a socio-technical content analysis of offshore wind farms and provides a technologically precise and contemporary conceptualization in comparison with complex engineering and megaproject approaches. Based on publicly available data, budget and time overruns and underperformance are demonstrated. Budget overruns range from 0% to 65%; time overruns from 9% to 100%, Operational performance indicators reveal plants far below and just below estimations. These are all indications of strategic misrepresentation, but according to project players, the delays originate from weather, product technology, site features and processes. The findings thus indicate a latent controversy regarding reasons for overruns. A socio-technical variant of reference class forecasting (RCF) is developed to explore whether RCF could improve the estimates. Socio-technical RCF is developed for 10 plants that share foundation, national and geotechnical conditions. This provides an illustrative example of a proposed uplift for London Array. Such an RCF should be orchestrated with more governance mechanisms in order to improve future investments in engineering construction, including offshore plants.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Koch, 2012. "Contested overruns and performance of offshore wind power plants," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(8), pages 609-622, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:30:y:2012:i:8:p:609-622
    DOI: 10.1080/01446193.2012.687830
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01446193.2012.687830
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01446193.2012.687830?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Santhakumar, Srinivasan & Smart, Gavin & Noonan, Miriam & Meerman, Hans & Faaij, André, 2022. "Technological progress observed for fixed-bottom offshore wind in the EU and UK," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    2. Herve Kabanda & Alex Romard & Fuze Yurtsever & Anjali Wadhera & Joshua Andrews & Craig Merrett, 2021. "Construction Time Estimation Function for Canadian Utility Scale Power Plants," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-16, August.
    3. Brookes, Naomi J. & Locatelli, Giorgio, 2015. "Power plants as megaprojects: Using empirics to shape policy, planning, and construction management," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 57-66.
    4. Lerche, J. & Lorentzen, S. & Enevoldsen, P. & Neve, H.H., 2022. "The impact of COVID -19 on offshore wind project productivity – A case study," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    5. Schwanitz, Valeria Jana & Wierling, August, 2016. "Offshore wind investments – Realism about cost developments is necessary," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 170-181.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:30:y:2012:i:8:p:609-622. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RCME20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.