Turkish-Korean consortium to build Turkey’s largest solar plant

ANKARA

AA photo

The Turkish-Korean Kalyon-Hanwha consortium on March 20 won the tender bid for the construction of Turkey’s biggest solar power plant set to be built in the Central Anatolian province of Konya’s Karapınar district, with an estimated investment volume of $1.3 billion. 

The head of the tender commission and undersecretary of the Energy Ministry, Abdullah Tancan, announced that the consortium offered the best bid with 6.99 cents per kWh at the end of the tender, which was held at the ministry in Ankara. 

The tender was conducted in a reverse auction and the ceiling price per megawatt was set at $0.08.     

Overall, four consortiums, including Limak-CMEC-Hareon Solar consortium, Çalık-Hareon Solar consortium and AKC consortium, composed of Turkish, Saudi and Chinese companies, in addition to the winner consortium, participated in the tender.

Energy Minister Berat Albayrak said the investment volume of the 1,000 megawatt (MW) solar power plan would exceed $1.3 billion, describing the tender “revolutionary” for Turkey’s energy sector and “a highly crucial turning point in renewable energy.”

Albayrak also noted that a similar tender would be held in wind energy in the upcoming months. 

Turkey plans to supply most of its energy needs from domestic resources and has held its first auction for renewable energy resources for 1,000 megawatts of installed capacity along with a production factory for photovoltaic equipment.      

The tender requested locally produced equipment to be used and stipulated that local engineers should constitute 80 percent of employment in the project. 

Kalyon Holding Energy Group President Murtaza Ata said the project was key on the road to minimizing Turkey’s dependency on foreign sources in energy. 

“This is not about building a power plant, but also boosting indigenous production in this field. It makes us very excited to create technologies which have not existed within Turkey,” he said, as reported by Reuters. 

A photovoltaic equipment production factory, which will produce the equipment for the Karapınar YEKA power plant, will be constructed in the following 21 months after the signing of its tender agreement, as reported by state-run Anadolu Agency. 

The solar project in Karapınar will meet the energy needs of more than 600,000 households and will create around 1,500 new jobs, according to energy officials.