ASTANA (TCA) — A ground-breaking ceremony was held for construction of a solar power plant in the village of Kabanbai Batyr in the Akmola province, some 30 kilometers from Kazakhstan’s capital city, Astana, Novosti-Kazakhstan news agency reported.
According to the press service of the province’s administration, KB ENTERPRISES (a wholly-owned Kazakh company) is implementing a project to build a solar power plant with daily generation capacity of 100 MW or 288 thousand MW per year. The cost of the project is 150 million euros, including 30 percent in investments from Turkey, Germany, and the Netherlands.
More than 31 thousand solar panels will be installed on an area of 300 hectares.
The project will create 200 jobs during the plant’s construction and 70 permanent jobs for local residents upon its completion.
In addition, to balance the electricity generation at nights, the company plans to build a bio-gas power plant with daily capacity of 50 MW, worth 45 million euros. A rabbit and fish farm will be constructed to provide manure to the bio-gas plant, as well as a greenhouse.
Last year, the first large-scale solar power plant project in Kazakhstan, Burnoye Solar, received support from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The landmark project received co-financing by the EBRD and the Clean Technology Fund (CTF) with loans of well over €80 million.
Burnoye Solar will be the first commercial-scale solar park in Kazakhstan and the first privately owned renewable energy generator in the country. It will be located in the energy-deficit Zhambyl province in south Kazakhstan. The project is implemented jointly by local and European contractors.
