21 wind power plants in 7 earthquake-hit provinces generating electricity

ANKARA

A total of 21 wind power plants are up and running following the two 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes that took the majority of the wind plants offline in the region, the head of the Turkish Wind Energy Association (TUREB) told Anadolu on Friday.

According to Ibrahim Erden, wind power plants with an installed capacity of 962.4 megawatts (MW) spread across seven cities are now supplying uninterrupted power to earthquake-affected areas.

The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes were centered in Kahramanmaras and struck 10 other provinces: Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Hatay, Gaziantep, Malatya, Kilis, Osmaniye, Elazig and Sanliurfa. More than 13 million people have been affected by the devastating quakes.

The earthquakes described as the "disaster of the century" caused outages to almost all wind power plants due to failures in the energy transmission lines, Erden explained.

However, he said that TUREB intervened very quickly after the first shock to maintain operations, and mobilized to help in the search and rescue mission after the initial hours following the quakes.

​​​​​Condition of wind farms

According to TUREB data, Hatay is the earthquake-affected region with the most wind plants, 11 in total, with an installed capacity of 437.47 MW. The earthquake epicenter, Kahramanmaras, has two power plants with an installed capacity of 121.5 MW that are operating at full capacity.

Wind farms with installed capacities of 33.4 MW, 65.5 MW, 11.7 MW, and 27.5 MW are operating in the provinces of Adana, Gaziantep, Malatya, and Adiyaman, respectively.

Power generation has resumed in the Osmaniye-Gaziantep region, with a capacity of 242 MW, and the Osmaniye-Kahramanmaras region, with a capacity of 23.3 MW.