The Life Cycle of a CSOP Investment: Sample Calculation for a German Wind Turbine

Abstract

The sample calculations in this chapter illustrate the life cycle of a CSOP. They are based on the German Renewable Energy Act before the 2017 reform. This reform ushered the transition from a plain feed-in tariff (FIT) system to a tendering-based scheme. The main differences with regard to projects of a size that now fall under a tender scheme, as the example for the wind turbine below, are twofold: (1) investors interested in a project now need to bid for the contract, that is, they offer to implement the project based on an individually agreed FIT—the bids are those tariffs. Thus, the lowest bidder wins the procurement contract and later operates on the agreed FIT. (2) winners are no longer allowed to self-use the produced energy—all produced electricity has to be fed into the electricity system. While this contradicts the prosumer idea, for the sample calculations, both differences are unimportant: Firstly, instead of referring to the FIT as stipulated by in the Renewable Energy Act, the FIT that was determined in the tender applies. Secondly, RE-CSOPs are now lucrative if and only if the investors decide to sell the entire energy production. However, this has been the assumption of many simulated RE-CSOP implementations before; the following model calculations will illustrate why. Nonetheless, it should be noted that this circumstance is a specific feature of the recent German renewable energy policy, not having universal validity for other countries, either in the EU or worldwide.