Business View Oceania | March 2020

89 90 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA MARCH 2020 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA MARCH 2020 electricity grid connection. If a parcel of land is close enough to the transmission infrastructure, then WestWind would aim to connect into that infrastructure and sell the electricity on the electricity market. “It’s important in our industry to have a business model that grows with the industry and the market demands,” says Geiger. “There is an increasing inflow of financial investors in the renewable energy space and unlike a utility, those investors don’t have the people on the ground to actually manage and operate those projects. So they’re quite keen to work in a partnership with the original developer who takes on that ongoing stakeholder management. What has changed and affects our business model is that the financiers prefer developers to stay in the project and retain skin in the game in the long term but also support the ongoing project management. So we’re now catering more to that client base away from the utilities and more towards financial investors in this space who really want the developer in for the life of the project.” Asset management is done typically by the wind turbine manufacturer. A developer of renewable energy projects such as WestWind signs a long- term maintenance agreement whereby the manufacturer maintains the turbines for them. The role of WestWind is making sure that the maintenance regime is followed and that the turbines are sound; engaging independent experts to check on the health of the turbines, check the documentation, but the actual work is done by the specialists – usually the turbine suppliers. All the major turbine suppliers around the globe have sales offices in Australia and that includes a project management team so they have people on the ground. WESTWIND ENERGY PTY LTD