Proposal of a methodology for the planning of a small wind turbine installation for a multi-site company based on a technical-economic analysis

Over the years, the diffusion of wind technology has heavily increased as wind farms are steadily being implemented as government regulations towards the reduction of carbon footprint are being confirmed worldwide and attention is drawn to sustainable development. However, while regarded as a feasible and interesting renewable alternative for utility companies, at the industrial level, organizations have only recently begun to approach this technology with the aim of self-producing energy. In this context, the most favorable situation is the one regarding large companies with multiple sites located throughout the territory and with good investment capacity. For these companies, the primary issue is represented by the lack of proper knowledge about the actual technical and economic feasibility of the project. Thus, this work aims to propose a comprehensive and structured methodology for the planning of small wind turbine installation for multi-site companies, providing the organization with a preliminary assessment about which among the various sites available are the most suitable. The proposed methodology takes into account several factors, such as the logistical, territorial and social characteristics of the various available sites, enabling the organization to obtain a clear picture of the feasibility of this application. The methodology comprises two phases: in the first phase, three major criteria are used to perform a first exclusion of sites according to technological, regulatory and logistics restraints, while the second phase aims to classify the remaining sites through the application of a multi-criteria analysis to identify the sites with the highest installation priority. Finally, the proposed methodology has been applied to a multi-site company with over fifty sites over all of Italy in order to test its applicability.