GCube, an underwriter for renewable energy projects, has launched a data-powered insurance offering. The service, supported by Clir, will leverage AI-led analytics and data sets to offer enhanced terms and reduced premiums for wind and solar operating companies.
Over the last 10 years, renewable energy insurance has been characterized by some significant losses that have resulted in the market altering terms in order to compensate. Moreover, as the wind and solar industries have expanded in scale, proliferated into more extreme environments, and brought a raft of new products into the market, claims severity has increased. With insurance premiums resetting to a new base, renewable energy project operators face increasing insurance costs.
“Insuring renewable energy has been a tumultuous process over the last decade,” says Fraser McLachlan, CEO of GCube Insurance Inc. “Claims from equipment failure, natural catastrophe loss and contractor error have forced some underwriters to exit the market. To continue to offer insurance at sustainable rates for clients, we need to have deeper insights into the risk of failure and operational management of renewable energy equipment.”
In a move designed to support the sustainable growth of the renewables industry in the long term, GCube has signed with Clir to leverage data from over 200 GW of operating assets. By better understanding claims scenarios, insurers will be able to provide more accurate insurance quotes, and subsequently drive better terms for the industry.
“By utilizing the data analysis from Clir, we can gain these insights at the quote phase in a unique and highly effective process, which benefits clients through a better understanding of their project risks, and incentivizes best practice in the operational asset management of wind and solar,” McLachlan adds.
By having Clir onboard a wind portfolio’s data set onto its platform, GCube can uncover the asset’s meteorological and operational loading, overall component health and reliability, and the impact of current operations and maintenance. These insights give GCube clarity on its underwriting pricing, and offer more competitive terms where operating projects model with lower risk factors.
“It’s our belief at Clir that the only way to continue to drive a lower levelized cost of energy for renewables, is to positively influence the financial imperatives that drive renewable energy pricing – insurance, project acquisition, and power management,” comments Clir CEO Gareth Brown.
“By leveraging the insight from our artificial intelligence (AI) platform, and benchmarking against the 200 GW of renewable energy operational data we have, we can work with GCube to help their underwriters better understand renewable energy portfolio risks, going so far as to give a probability risk value of asset failure for specific projects,” continues Brown.
