W3C - Wind Farm Profitability

We received complaints about the profitability of Wind Farm corporations.

First:
Nothing was changed in the structure of such corporations for a very long time and they used to be very profitable.

We have now looked into these corporations in all worlds.

Wind farms, like all other products can have a surplus or shortage on the market.

We looked at current pricing and profitability.
When there is a surplus, these corporations are losing a lot of money. their market value can go under 100B.

when there is a shortage, the market price can be 700 B or even much more.

Profitability fluctuates with the market price and in these corporations, the fluctuation is very large.

There is also a cash flow problem because the products come at a very high price and the corporations sell once in 8 or 10 months.

We think that the market can drive itself.
If you are suffering high losses, close the corporation.
At some point, we will end up with the right number of corporations and they will be very profitable profitable.

we generally do not intervene in the markets.
There is no reason to intervene now.

Please fix this at least make them sell twice a year. And lower the price of wind turbines 75 million for one turbine is extremely high you barely make profit do the math

As one of the most outspoken critics of how wind has been handled in various stages of its implementation, I honestly think it is at a relatively acceptable level right now. Optimized, assuming WTs and WFs are both in shortage, you will get about 2 times income than you have expenses on them according to Finance Index, while also potentially increasing costs in other FI categories due to the power quality. They provide decent payout above other power generating ventures but take more effort and optimization to get it. As a larger wind producer I’d of course love to see them worth more or maintenance costs drop, but that’s because I’d benefit. I think in the grand scheme right now it is a decent tradeoff between what you get and what you give up to get it.

Thank you Unsthable.

I am happy we went the full cycle and got to this point.
Although it was not always a very friendly exchange,
at the end of the day, you did help us at the time, in making the necessary corrections.

Its not profitable

It is though. Assuming product is in shortage like everything else.

State owned Wind Farm Corporation:
$40.77B Market Price
0.11 Production @ 100 Welfare
$9.5B Raw Materials Cost @ 220Q
$289M Salary @ 100 Index
$350M Other Costs

Assuming a 9 month cycle to produce 1 WF:
Income - $110.08B (270Q)
Cost - $91.25B
Profit - $18.83B
Profit / Month - $2.09B

~ $2B monthly profit average is pretty well in line with expected values, some corp types are a little higher, some a little lower.

Absolutely feel free to correct me if I've made an error here or overlooked something. I definitely don't claim to always be right, so if you're seeing something I'm not please let me know.

I recently recovered a badly neglected wind farm that was on the verge of closing with hundreds of billions in loads. It's a public corp, so I had transferred no cash to it, it was completely self-funded.

On that note, interest rates are too low. Interest was a non-factor in the financials of a corporation on the very edge of bankruptcy and insolvency. It needs to be changed.

I have an issue that's semi related to this thread I think. My assets maint corp has a unfulfilled supply order of 110 wind farms. I find that rather odd considering the said corp only uses 0.01 windfarms per month. I'm a new president, this order backlog is from before I owned the country.

I bring it up because when I go to cancel that massive order it only cancels 1 wind farm at a time. I really don't want to click cancel 110 times.

STATS TAKEN FROM THE GAME (FB)

Wind Farms

Product Group: Utilities

Market Price: 40.77B SC$

Total Demand: 88,397 wind farms

Total Supply: 52 wind farms

Shortage/Oversupply: 88,345 wind farms

Corporations producing this product 567


This supply/demand dynamic seems unreasonable? I'm wondering if there's other c3 corps with large order backlogs like the 1 in my country creating such an imbalance?

Wind Farms have been a pain point for Assets Maintenance corps since their inclusion as a supply product, but to a degree its a necessary evil. Wind Farms aren't ordered automatically by C3s for their nations, they are only manual orders by players who wish to establish some for their country or automatic orders by Assets Maintenance corps.

Having WFs used by a corp, it isn't overly popular but I get it, since it is otherwise 'player only' it gives them some utility use even if players aren't actively building them for their own use.

The problem is in their usage and how automatic ordering works. If you click on My Corporations -> Orders tab, you'll see the outstanding orders for supply products that your corps currently have. Most products in the game are produced in a balanced enough amount that the lag on receiving supplies is rarely over 6 months. If an automatic supply order goes too long unfulfilled (I want to say 6-10 months), another order is made on top of the existing order - and that can just keep going and going ending up in situations like yours where you have a corp ordering over 100 WFs despite only using 0.01 per month. Silver and Wind Farms are the two main culprits where the shortages are so extreme that by the time your corporation starts getting them if you're using default buying prices, they will end up overbuying to the point where they go bankrupt within a couple of months.

It has been brought up with Andy a few times, but only he really knows what goes into the game coding and how to fix it; and he has made it sound like a more challenging fix on his end than we would think it would be from what we see on our end.

The easiest bandaid that still is a pain but is at least a little viable for where we are now is to have your own Wind Farms corp and contract production to your Assets Maintenance corp for 9 months (at 100% production level that will produce 0.99 WFs so you should expect 1 WF produced and sold to the Assets Maintenance corp in that 9 months. You set it at that point so it doesn't sell one to the corp every time it makes one since like you already know, 1 WF lasts 100 months in that corp.

With the current shortage on most worlds in WFs, producing them yourself if you're looking to grow your own Wind infrastructure or support your Assets Maintenance corps, is the most viable option at the moment. The FB stats that you just shared implied that, because open market orders tend to be first come first served without manipulation, you'd expect 283 REAL DAYS before getting a Wind Farm that you ordered now at best price.

Ok, thank you for the detailed response to what is clearly an old issue. I've much to learn. Wind farms weren't a part of the game last time I played and If I'm reading your post correctly they have some specific function that only players can take advantage of. I cant really think what that would be other than cheaper energy. I'll have to do some digging around. Thanks again

The game's discord is a great resource, but as a TLDR breakdown of what could easily be a long more detailed explanation:

Wind Farms become a permanent asset in your country (like a School, Hospital, etc). They produce 1250 Electric Power per month each and deposit it straight into your country's stockpile at the same quality the Wind Farms are; and they consume 1 Wind Turbine and some other minor goods as maintenance cost each month.

you maintain good hiring for it to work. So you have to change edpriorities every now and then. a 5% hiring wind farm wont do anything. Wg is pretty green