BAKU, Azerbaijan, Feb. 17
By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:
Notwithstanding the fact that Kazakhstan’s Pavlodar region was not included in the plan for placement of renewable energy sources (RES) approved by country’s Ministry of Energy, region’s private companies use these technologies, a representative of the region’s energy and communal services department told Trend.
The official said that the region was not included in the plan due to the surplus of the electricity production by the traditional energy sources and lack of favorable climate conditions for development and operation of RES.
However, the fact does not prevent region’s private companies from using RES technologies, the representative added.
The official said that in order to provide for its own needs the Galickoe venture purchased two wind power plants the capacity of which is 1MW each. Galickoe is a private company which is mainly concerned with manufacturing of milk, meat, cereals and industrial crops.
In turn, КSP Steel company is currently implementing a project for use of heat pump installation instead of two electric boilers to heat the drinking water. The company is Kazakhstan’s first venture manufacturing seamless steel pipes for oil and gas industry.
Additionally, Aksu city’s akimat (administrative center) has installed two heat pump installations to use groundwater for heating of a number of buildings, which allowed to decrease heating costs. The value of project’s implementation was 9.1 million tenge ($24,125).
Talking on the traditional energy sources, the official said that in Dec. 2019, Eurasian Energy Corporation JSC has put into operation its fifth power unit of 325 MW capacity.
Meanwhile, Ekibastuz GRES-1 continues restoration of its first power unit the capacity of which is 500 MW; it is scheduled to be commissioned in 2024.
Based on some estimates, country’s potential for solar energy production ranges from 3.9 to 5.4 billion WH per year, whereas the ‘ceiling’ of wind power is 920 billion kWh per year.
As of the end of 2019, 90 RES facilities of 1,050 MW of capacity were operating in Kazakhstan including 19 wind parks (283.8 MW), 31 solar parks (541.7 MW), 37 hydropower plants (222.2 MW) and three biopower plants. This year, the number of RES facilities is to be increased from 90 to 108 with the total capacity of 1,655 MW this year.
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