1.6 Billion Euro Investment In Wind Energy

1.6 billion Euro investment in wind energy. Wind power projects are spreading in Turkey.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), Turkish Wind Energy Association Chairman Güray Erol stated that, considering the return on investment and production feasibility, the project capacities of mini YEKA WPP can be determined as 20, 30 and 50 megawatts. Stating that different investors can participate in such auctions and it would be possible to build the power plants faster, Erol said: “Thus, the projects can be financed more easily. The Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EMRA) should have accepted the applications of these 2 thousand megawatts project in 2018. Later, they postponed it to October 2020. As October approached, they suspended it indefinitely. Now we understand that Energy and The Ministry of Natural Resources decided to use this 2 thousand megawatts as YEKA, which the Turkish Electricity Transmission Inc. deems appropriate and which will be opened by EMRA as a capacity.” Expressing that there are different ideas about where these projects will be done, Erol continued his speech with the following words: “There are three corridors in Turkey where the wind is strong. One of these corridors is in the southern part of Tekirdag and Marmara Sea, the other is in Balikesir, Izmir and Bodrum. The third corridor is the Karaman, Mersin Taurus and Hatay ridges band. These three regions are the region where the most investment is made and they are very intense in terms of capacity. We think that in mini YEKA WPP, the regions with less installation will be evaluated. We anticipate that the investment amount of the 2 thousand megawatts capacity mini YEKA WPP projects, which are expected to be announced in the coming days, will be 1.6 billion Euros.”

The Obligation to Set Up a Factory Can Be Eliminated

Erol stated that they think that as the capacity scales decrease, the necessity of establishing an R&D center or factory will disappear as in other YEKA projects. In addition, Erol mentioned that the necessary equipment for the projects can be easily obtained from domestic companies and made the following statements: “In Turkey, 50 percent of the wind equipment can be purchased from local production. Also, if electricity storage is required for some of the mini YEKA WPP projects, there will be an improvement that the industry has been waiting for for many years. This will both help the infrastructure in preventing imbalances in the system coming from the natural resource itself and we will have a more reliable and robust electricity infrastructure.”