| 06 Feb 2026
Review and quantification of major risks in wind farm development and operation
Abstract. With declining subsidies and tightening project margins, wind energy investments are increasingly exposed to a wide range of technical, operational, market, and system-level risks. Understanding the combined economic and technical relevance of these risks, and how they interact across project lifecycle phases, is essential for translating them into economic impact metrics. This study combines expert elicitation, structured survey results, and targeted literature review to identify and categorize the major risks affecting wind energy projects during both development and operation. These risks are clustered into four overarching sector challenges spanning long-term asset viability, component reliability, operation and maintenance performance, and rapid technology upscaling. To illustrate the potential economic relevance of these challenges, simplified scenario-based techno-economic impact assessments are conducted using a representative offshore wind farm case study. The analysis offers order-of-magnitude insights into how different risk categories propagate into economic performance indicators such as net present value and levelized cost of energy. The results demonstrate that different risks exhibit different economic signatures, including asymmetric downside risk, long-tailed loss distributions. Overall, this work does not propose a complete solution for capturing the full complexity of wind energy risks. Instead, it demonstrates the limitations of fragmented risk treatment and motivates the need for integrated, de-risking and decision-support frameworks capable of addressing interacting uncertainties. The study provides a structured starting point for future research aimed at developing such tools and supporting more robust investment, design, and operational decisions in the wind energy sector.
Competing interests: At least one of the (co-)authors is a member of the editorial board of Wind Energy Science.
Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this paper. While Copernicus Publications makes every effort to include appropriate place names, the final responsibility lies with the authors. Views expressed in the text are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.
General comments:
Thank you to the editorial team and the authors for the opportunity to review. These comments and questions are presented for consideration. Overall, the report covers an important topic and presents interesting interview results that add valuable perspective. Specific sections of the manuscript seem to be well written while others read overly verbose, which makes certain sections difficult to follow. Streamlining the narrative and improving transitions between sections could help enhance clarity and readability. The writing style occasionally feels formulaic, and a careful editorial review to ensure consistency in tone and flow may strengthen the overall presentation.
While the findings generally align with expected outcomes, the discussion could more clearly emphasize actionable recommendations for industry stakeholders, particularly regarding strategies to reduce risks and system costs. The paper would also benefit from incorporating more quantifiable comparisons where possible, e.g., if a particular risk management was implemented it could reduce system LCOE by 15%. In several sections, it was challenging to identify which factors had the largest influence on key economic metrics such as NPV or LCOE, getting lost in what seemed like distracting text to core discussion topics that could be more concisely written. The conclusion of the paper may benefit from a more synthesized perspective of the work. Perhaps by pulling together a summary table of results highlighting the highest priority risks, the relative impact of those risks, and the major drivers the offshore wind industry could invest in would help readers quickly understand the most consequential results and improve the practical usefulness of the study.
Specific comments:
Line 11: Define 'asymmetric downside risk' and 'long-tailed loss distributions' in the Abstract section. Alternatively, avoid using these terms in the Abstract and consider alternative language to help the reader understand these themes.
Line 39: is the construction of the wind plant included in the 'development' phase?
Line 42: it's most likely defined later, but what is a 'tool chain?'
Line 50: is the 'maintenance performance' defining the efficiency of the maintenance activities or the performance of the wind plant?
Line 52: It may be worth including a graphic defining the phases of a wind project. The descriptions of the phases seem to be changing throughout the paper.
Line 58: if not defined later in the manuscript, it would be nice to include some high-level stats on the structured survey, e.g., approximately how many experts, etc.
Line 65: would benefit the definition of 'sector challenge.' Is this specific to the wind sector?
Line 93: the 'constant power output' does not consider time-series wind resource?
Line 99: 'access constraints' are defined by events such as high winds or harsh seas?
Line 104: is this impacting the OPEX costs or affecting the finance assumptions of the project?
Line 108: should the performance degradation theoretically start once the project is operating instead of at the end of the design life.
Line 261: assuming the OPEX, energy, and other variables in the LCOE equation are being held constant for this assessment. May be worth explaining these assumptions in a bit more detail.
Line 438: did the approach consider failures beyond the wind turbine, e.g., substructure or cables?
Line 588: Was it intentional to keep NPV and remove LCOE from Figure 8?
Line 742: Is it worth showing the impacts on LCOE in Figure 10. How much impact does the OPEX lever have?
Line 745: Is there significance to the shaded areas in Figure 11 as compared to box and whiskers?
Line 879: Is there a cost associated with implementation of O&M best practices?
Line 1008: these are the types of identified conclusions make sense and placing emphasis on what might be possible to lower costs or increase performance would strengthen the outcome of the study.
Line 1032: 'Overall' appears to be used a couple of times in the Conclusion but in different context. It was challenging to conclude the overall points of the analysis with the swarm of information.
Technical corrections:
Line 104: typo, 'into to' change to 'into.'
Line 130: is 'Risk' capitalized intentionally?
Line 130: should 'section' be capitalized?
Line 166: looks like part of the chart label got cut off on the right-hand side.
Line 977: This paragraph reads repetitious of the one prior.