Nameplate capacity is a design figure. It photographs well in a teaser. Availability is the share of time the plant can actually run, after maintenance, failures, and grid instructions. Lenders and offtakers often pay against the second number.

Look at the guarantee, not the brochure

Turbine and module suppliers sell an availability guarantee with exclusions. Read the exclusions and the damages if the guarantee is missed. A guarantee that pays a spare-parts credit does not replace a year of lost revenue.

Maintenance is a revenue item

Major maintenance, inverter replacement, and grid outages belong in the production case. A model that runs at nameplate for twenty years is not conservative. It is unfinished.

Ask what the plant earns in a year when availability is two points worse than the base case. If the answer is a cash call, nameplate was never the asset.