SOFIA (Bulgaria), September 16 (SeeNews) – Bulgaria may see almost fivefold increase in installed wind power generation capacities to up to 500 megawatts (MW) by the end of 2010, a sector official said on Tuesday.
“At present, there are 110-120 megawatts [of] installed [capacity] in the country. All investments in wind power energy to date total some 200 million euro ($283.8 million),” the chairman of the Association of Producers of Ecological Energy, Velizar Kiryakov, told SeeNews from Varna, on the Black Sea.
Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, should generate at least 11% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010 and 16% by 2020 under agreements with the bloc. At present, only a few wind turbines operate in the ex-communist state.
The largest wind power facility in the country, which was launched earlier this year and has an installed capacity of 35 MW, is the Kaliakra Wind Power farm, a joint venture of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and local company Inos 1. The other projects are small ones, such as the 5-MW wind park of Dannish Global Wind Power, Kiryakov said. Two projects, by Raiffeisen Energy & Environment and an unnamed Austrian company - for a 14-MW and a 32-MW park, respectively, are to be completed by the end of the year, he added.
Kiryakov said some 500 million euro will be invested in wind power generation facilities to be launched next year.
The biggest project, for a 156-MW wind park, is being implemented by AES Geo Energy, a joint venture of U.S. AES and its Bulgarian partner GeoPower. Eolica Bulgaria, a unit of Spanish Eolica Navara, plans a 60-MW wind facility, and Austria's Windkraft Simonsfeld plans to a 40-MW facility at Bulgaria’s northeast Black Sea coast, Kiryakov said.
Other projects include a 49.9-MW unit by Bulgarian diverisified fund CSIF, which already operates 20-MW wind power generation facilities, a 50-MW facility by Swiss energy group Atel, a 70-MW project by Bulgaria’s GP Energy, owned by Greece’s Terna Energy, and a 200-MW park by Bulgarian energy company Balkan Energy. U.S.-based EIG Renewables and the world's largest wind turbine producer, Vestas Wind Systems, have also shown interest in investing in Bulgaria.
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