Turkey eyes offshore wind

Turkey eyes offshore wind

August 09, 2018

By Ekin Inal and Ali Donat

The Turkish Ministry of Energy launched a tender for the country’s first offshore wind power plant on June 21. The deadline for bid submissions is October 23.

The plant will have a capacity of 1,200 megawatts. Saros and Gallipoli located in the Aegean Sea and Kıyıköy in the Thrace (on the coast of the Black Sea) were named as the possible locations for the plant. Grid connection points will be detailed in the tender specifications. These locations are close to Turkey’s industrialized regions.

The complete details of the project will be set out in the tender specifications, which have not been made public. Interested bidders will have to submit a bid bond in the amount of $20 million to participate in the tender. The winning bidder will have to submit a performance bond of $100 million.

The ceiling tariff for the project is set at $80 per megawatt hour. The winning bidder will be selected through an underbidding procedure. The power purchase agreement awarded will not have a fixed term, but will be for the period it takes for the plant to generate 50 terawatt hours of electricity once the plant is in commercial operation. Before releasing the tender, the Ministry of Energy said that 60% of the equipment will have to be domestically manufactured and 80% of the employment will have to be Turkish citizens.

This will be the country’s third renewable power plant developed under a “renewable energy resource area” scheme (YEKA). The scheme involves allocation of land by the government for large-scale renewable energy projects to be developed by private-sector sponsors. Previously in March 2017, a consortium comprising Hanwha Q Cells and the Turkish Kalyon Group won the tender for a solar power plant of 1,000 megawatts, with the winning offer of US$69.90 per megawatt hour. In August 2017, a Siemens-led consortium, including Turkish companies Türkerler and Kalyon Enerji, was awarded the tender for a 1,000-megawatt wind power plant for US$34.8 per megawatt hour.

As of June 2018, Turkey has 232 wind power plants (both licensed and unlicensed), with a total installed capacity of 6,671 megawatts. Wind energy makes up 7.7% of the country’s power generation.

WindEurope, a Brussels-based trade group formerly known as the European Wind Energy Association, underscores Turkey’s potential for wind power, and says that its deep waters offer great potential for floating offshore wind technology.

According to the Global Wind Energy Council data, the United Kingdom leads the offshore wind market with an installed capacity of 6,800 megawatts. Germany and China follow the UK, with respective installed capacities of 5,300 megawatts and 2,700 megawatts. The offshore wind market moves full throttle and it remains to be seen whether Turkey will be able to position itself as a major player in the global market.