TASHKENT (TCA) — Work is going on in Uzbekistan to assess the country’s wind energy potential in cooperation with Germany’s Intec Gopa and GEO-NET, Novosti Uzbekistana reported citing Dilshod Elmuradov, an energy efficiency and renewable energy engineer at Uzbekistan’s state energy company Uzbekenergo.
The wind energy potential is currently being assessed in the Navoi province and Karakalpakstan Autonomous Region, after which recommendations will be presented for wind farms construction in these regions, he said.
GEO-NET won the Asian Development Bank’s tender for the preparation of a wind atlas of Uzbekistan. According to German specialists, in addition to its large solar energy potential, Uzbekistan also has significant wind energy potential.
The Bukhara, Navoi, Kashkadarya, and Tashkent provinces, as well as the northwestern Karakalpakstan Autonomous Region, are the most suitable places for building wind farms in Uzbekistan.
According to Uzbekenergo, Uzbekistan’s wind energy potential is estimated at around 520,000 MW and more than a billion megawatt-hours of annual power generation.
Construction of wind power generation facilities now costs a little more than $1 million per each megawatt of installed capacity, almost the same as for modern steam-gas turbines. The cost of electricity generated by wind power is around 5.5 US dollar cents per kilowatt.
According to experts, Uzbekistan’s demand for electricity grew from 46.8 billion kilowatt-hours in 2000 up to 57.5 billion kilowatt-hours in 2015.
By 2020, Uzbekistan is expected to consume around 72 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.
It was earlier reported that until 2020, Uzbekenergo plans to build a wind farm at a preliminary cost of nearly $200 million. The project provides for construction of wind turbines with a total generating capacity of 50-100 MW.
