Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev earlier this week attended the ceremony to launch the construction of wind power plants in the country’s northwestern region of Karakalpakstan.
A wind power plant with a capacity of 1 gigawatts and worth $1.2 billion will be built by the Chinese company Sany Renewable in Karakalpakstan’s Kungrad district. Another wind plant — with a capacity of 200 megawatts with a storage system for 100 megawatts of electricity and worth $250 million — will be constructed by the Saudi company ACWA Power in the Beruni and Karauzak districts.
When operational, the new power plants will generate 4.2 billion kilowatt-hours of green energy per year, an equivalent to the annual consumption of 1.75 million households, and will save about 1.3 billion cubic meters of natural gas and reduce the harmful emissions into the atmosphere by almost 2 million tons.
The president also launched the construction of enterprises for the production of parts, racks and blades for wind turbines in the Kungrad district.
According to estimates, Karakalpakstan has a potential to generate 680 gigawatts of solar and 120 gigawatts of wind energy.
By 2030, plans are in Karakalpakstan to build 10 large wind power plants with a total capacity of 10.3 gigawatts through direct investment of $11 billion. Once operational, these power plants will generate 35 billion kilowatt-hours of green energy per year.
In recent years, 10 solar and wind power plants with a total capacity of 2.6 gigawatts have been commissioned in Uzbekistan through investments of $2 billion. By the end of this year, an additional 1.5 gigawatts of generating capacity will be connected to the grid, and the share of green energy will be increased to 15 percent of the country’s energy mix.
