This thesis deals with the process of decision making, more precisely the process of deriving well-grounded investment decisions in the wind energy sector. The question about the value of an offshore wind park in the German part of the North- or Baltic Sea will be discussed by creating a bottom-up analysis of the expected cash flows and their volatilities. Additionally to standard routines like the NPV, real option theory will be introduced and applied in order to derive the value of the management's flexibility in such a project. Therefore, next to economic theory, the physical basics of wind energy production, as well as the corresponding legal situation are introduced. Additionally, the political influence on offshore wind energy is investigated. A statistic framework for the analysis of wind speed data is built up and applied. Based on this wide-spread theoretical framework, an approach to model the sources of uncertainty and their influence on a wind park's value process is motivated and derived. Out of the gained knowledge on this process, the management is supposed to have two different kinds of opportunities to influence the project's value: The option to enlarge the wind park, or the possibility to abandon the project and consequently avoid dramatic losses. The combination of both possibilities is shown to be a compound real option. In other words, the value of an option is influenced by another option. This non-trivial structure of flexibility will be implemented in a decision tree approach, as it was introduced in Copeland and Antikarov [2003]. By solving this decision tree, it can be shown, how the value of flexibility can influence the optimal investment advice in contrast to the basic NPV rule, which in reality is used for most investment decisions. Consequently, it is favorable to use real option theory for investment decisions, because otherwise an investor might ignore value-creating investments and thus act in a suboptimal way.      «

This thesis deals with the process of decision making, more precisely the process of deriving well-grounded investment decisions in the wind energy sector. The question about the value of an offshore wind park in the German part of the North- or Baltic Sea will be discussed by creating a bottom-up analysis of the expected cash flows and their volatilities. Additionally to standard routines like the NPV, real option theory will be introduced and applied in order to derive the value of the managem...     »