ISTANBUL
Turkey's Energy Market Regulatory Authority has received 14 times more pre-license applications than its allocated capacity for wind power plants, Mustafa Yilmaz, head of the authority, revealed Wednesday.
Addressing the opening session of the 21st International Energy and Environment Fair and Conference, or the ICCI 2015, which is sponsored by Anadolu Agency in Istanbul, Yilmaz said that the allocated capacity for wind power plants was 3,000 megawatts, but the authority received a total of 42,273 megawatts pre-license applications last week.
The pre-license applications were accepted between April 24 and 30 by Turkey's energy watchdog, which would be sent to Turkey's General Directorate of Renewable Energy for technical evaluations.
Yilmaz said that applicants had requested 5,500 megawatts capacity through 115 applications for the western Canakkale region; 4,500 megawatts in 102 applications for the western Balikesir region and 5,000 megawatts in 80 applications for the southern Karaman-Mersin region to build the wind power plants.
"Turkey has a great potential for wind power and I strongly believe that Turkey will reach its 20,000 megawatts installed capacity goal by 2023," he said.
Turkey's efficient electricity capacity is 48,000 megawatts and its 8,000 megawatts is highly efficient, he added.
Yilmaz said that the goal was to increase the rate of renewable energy usage to 30 percent by 2023.
Energy Market Regulatory Authority has so far given 10,000 megawatts licenses and almost 4,000 megawatts of it was already in use; 6,000 megawatts were under construction.
"Turkey's annual solar power capacity is 380 billion kilowatt-hour, which makes Turkey one of the leading countries in Europe with respect to its capacity," Yilmaz said.
He said that the number of applications and capacities to build power facilities rose rapidly after the regulation of unlicensed electricity production went into force; majority of such applications were for solar power.
Turkey's biggest wind power plant, Geycek, is located in central Turkey, which entered into service in January. This wind power plant consists of 70 wind turbines and will generate around 384 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year with an installed capacity of 150 megawatts.
Turkey currently has 40,000 megawatts of installed capacity in solar and 36,000 megawatts in wind power. The country aims to add another 20,000 megawatts of solar and wind by 2023.
Yilmaz added that Turkey's hydro-electricity production capacity was 36,000 megawatts.
