In recent years reduction of environmental pollution and renewable energy have received a significant place among experts and general public. At the beginning of the 20th century, wind energy, as the oldest source of energy, gave way to electricity from the conventional sources. Recently, wind energy has again gained importance. According to Global Wind Energy Council, total capacity of the wind generators built in 2014 was 369.597 MW.
For insurance, it is important whether the wind generators, as a subject of insurance, are offshore or onshore. It is also important whether the wind turbines are with horizontal or vertical shaft, whether they have two, three or more blades, what the installed capacity of wind generator is and who manufactured is.
In the beginning of the construction of wind generators, standard fire risk insurance was considered sufficient to insure these generators. With development and increasing number or wind generators, as well as with large financial value of this equipment and with demand of specialized insurance coverage, it has become clear that the insurance of wind generators requires specialized approach – Engineering insurance.
Insurers in Serbia have extensive experience in insuring electric power companies such as hydropower plants and thermal power plants. However, insurers in Serbia do not have special conditions for insuring wind generators because they still haven’t been built on the territory of Serbia.
Because of the importance of technical and technological characteristics of wind generators, insurers require that certain standards are implemented in the process of building wind generators, in the trial period and in the exploitation as well. These standards range from legal to technical.
For insurance of wind generators in construction, CAR and EAR policies are used and they are usually concluded by suppliers of equipment. For insurance of wind generators that are in process of exploitation or operational phase, property and business interruption insurance are being concluded. This insurance is based on the principle that everything is insured except exclusions. In defining the exclusions from insurance coverage of wind generators, we should bear in mind the specificity of the subject. Insurers of wind generators pay special attention to the reliability of the system and that it works as designed. In order to ensure that the reliability of the system is satisfactory, human management of these systems is increasingly transferred to software. When insuring wind generators, a special attention should be paid to the exclusions related to the computer systems, software, computer viruses and cyber-attacks.