Azerbaijan, Baku /corr. Trend I.Khalilova / Azerbaijan's Minister of Economic Development and also Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Azerbaijan Investment Company (AIC), Heydar Babayev, said on 2 November that the AIC began talks with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to attract the bank in financing the construction of wind power plants in Azerbaijan's district of Khizi.
The AIC has already signed a trilateral Memorandum of Understanding with "Tamirmashin" OJSC, and the German company "Nordwind Energieanlagen GmbH" concerning the question of their participation in building a wind power plant.
The establishment of six wind power plants with a collective annual power capacity of 13,200 MWh in Azerbaijan's Khizi district is the primary objective of the project. The terms of the project are that it is supposed to start being construction in the last quarter of the year 2007 and consist of the assembly of six wind power stations each with an annual power capacity of 2,200 megawatt/hour. It is also assumed that this project will be expanded and gradually increase the number of wind power plants in the future.
AIC already concluded the second memorandum on intention to develop alternative energy. The first was signed with the Korean company STX Energy, with a project estimated at $41mln.
According to initial research, nearly 100 alternative electricity sources are planned to be used over the next five years. Azerbaijan uses no alternative sources of electricity at present. Currently the share of alternative electricity sources in Azerbaijan does not equal 1% which falls on share of small hydro-electric power stations.
Depending on the capacity, the construction of one small hydro-electric power station is assessed between $600.000 and $1mln for 1MWt.