Wind energy in Pakistan – AEDB receives 17 offers for 3,000 MW wind power projects

AEDB’s efforts have attracted many international investors and proposals for more than 3,000 MW wind power projects from over 17 investors have been received and more investors are showing interest to develop wind power projects. Many other projects are at different stages at the moment, officials said.

At present 6 MW First Phase of Zorlu wind power project is operational and construction for complete 56.4 MW is underway. FFC Energy has also achieved financial close and its 50 MW project’s construction has been started.

As per the official documents, Nepra has determined tariff for 5 projects. Following 8 more IPPs have filed tariff petitions and generation licence applications to Nepra after signing EPC contracts.

AEDB in its official documents have claimed that 18 bankable feasibility studies have been completed by the IPPs which are at different stages of approval and 35 IPPs holding LOIs from AEDB pursuing development of wind power projects.

It is stated that land has been allocated to 18 IPPs for 50 MW wind power projects each. Projects with a cumulative capacity of 900 MW are at various stages of development on these lands.

Generation licences have been issued to 6 IPPs and more than 500 megawatt wind power would be added in the system by 2013. The officials said that AEDB has overcome many problems and one of them was attracting turbine manufacturers those were earlier not willing to supply machinery to Pakistan but now they are ready to manufacture after the success of first 6 megawatt project in the country.

The officials said that world’s leading wind turbines manufacturers like GE, Nordex, Siemens, Vestas, Goldwind, SUNEC are now offering very short delivery periods with complete turnkey EPC contracts. They also said that local manufacturing is also encouraged and Descon is now producing wind turbine towers while Heavy Industries Taxila is negotiating turbine assemble with leading wind manufacturers.

But the officials said that wind energy could play a very important role in overcoming deficiency of national grid but it cannot help much in the coming 2 or three years as it will take time to generate several thousand MW wind energy in the country.

Another very important thing is that it can never be the replacement of hydel power projects as those projects generate too much cheaper energy and also help in solving water issues related to agricultural sector of the country.

But it was learnt that wind power projects are far cheaper in terms of unit price as compared to Rental Power Plants. RPPs novel idea presented by Raja Pervaiz Ashraf wasted so much time of the country as if he would have done work on other opportunities, there could be many wind projects completed at the moment.

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