Turkey's first integrated solar panel production facility will be constructed in Baskent Organized Industrial Site located in Ankara with a groundbreaking ceremony planned for November, Energy Group Head of Kalyon Holding said on Sunday.
Kalyon Holding together with South Korean Hanwha Q-Cells consortium won the tender for Turkey's biggest solar power plant project - the Karapinar Renewable Energy Resources Zone Project, in Konya's Karapinar province in the Central Anatolian region of Turkey on March 20.
The consortium is responsible for building a 500-megawatt solar panel production facility and a solar power plant with 1,000 megawatts in capacity.
In this context, the solar panel production facility will be constructed in Ankara's Baskent Organized Industrial Site, Energy Group Head of Kalyon Holding Murtaza Ata told Anadolu Agency.
He said that following the groundbreaking ceremony in November, the facility will start producing its first panels at the end of 2018.
The facility needs to meet 60 percent of local production capacity in the first year while this percentage should increase to 70 percent thereafter.
"Although the capacity of the facility will be 500 megawatts initially, we made our plans so we can increase its capacity to 1,000 megawatts," Ata said.
- 1,000 engineers and technicians to be employed
He said that around $450 million would be invested in the integrated facility, which will include the production of ingot/wafer, solar cell production and panels.
Investment in the 1,000-megawatt solar power plant is close to $1 billion.
Ata stated that around 1,000 engineers and technicians will be employed in the factory along with 100 engineers at the Research and Development (R&D) Center.
The tender stipulates that 80 percent of the engineers at the R&D Center will be Turkish.
"We plan to produce first electricity from the Karapinar solar power plant in the first quarter of 2019," Ata informed.
- Plant to meet electricity of 600,000 households
The Kalyon-Hanwha consortium won the tender bid for the construction the solar power plant in Karapinar at a cost of US$0.0699 per kilowatt-hour. The sales price of the electricity will be valid for 15 years.
The tender, in which four consortiums participated, was conducted in a reverse auction with a ceiling price per megawatt set at $0.08.
The solar project will meet the energy needs of more than 600,000 households, Berat Albayrak, Turkey's energy and natural resources minister said in October 2016.
The plant will produce 1.7 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.
By Nuran Erkul
Anadolu Agency
energy@aa.com.tr
