Cover for generating assets whose risk shifts from construction to operation, and whose failures are often serial rather than accidental.
A wind or solar farm concentrates high value in standardized equipment, installed in hostile environments and operated without permanent human presence. The risk profile reads in three phases. During construction the major exposure is the transport and lifting of oversized components, offshore with narrow weather windows and scarce specialist vessels, so an incident mainly produces delay and therefore advanced loss of profits. During operation, losses are dominated by hail on solar farms, lightning and failures of blades and gearboxes, the latter being less accidental than serial, which makes the corresponding clause decisive. Finally, technology moves faster than loss experience accumulates, each generation of machines being larger than the one on which insurers hold data, a situation in which the underwriter is always pricing a machine it has never seen grow old.
The failure of a turbine blade at the Vineyard Wind offshore farm off Massachusetts on 13 July 2024 scattered composite debris on Nantucket beaches and led the United States federal regulator to suspend construction and generation at the site pending investigation.
renewable energy insurance, assurance éolien, assurance photovoltaïque, offshore wind insurance