alt Hacker NewsI think the point is that with thin margins and capital costs, 1.6% (compounded over decades) could be a large chunk of your profit.
TFA discusses this:
> To justify their investment and make a profit, "it's very important for a developer to be able to project that the wind farm will produce a given amount of electricity for 25 or 30 years", the typical lifespan of a wind farm, he says. Even a relatively small, unexpected reduction in that energy output can upset this investment calculation and make the wind farm not financially viable, Finserås says.
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> 1.6% (compounded over decades) could be a large chunk of your profit.
I don't understand what you're saying here. The 1.6% compounding was part of the plan from the first rough draft. The 3% is not compounding.
If wakes losses have been known for years as asserted by the piece, I'd argue it's the fault of the operator and investors building a farm downwind (or potentially) of another. The only thing I can think of is if regulatory or zoning changes caused underlying assumptions of wake loss to change.
It's like setting up a low margin Italian restaurant with none nearby and a few months later another Italian restaurant sets up taking your revenue, tough luck then