Turkey measures wind energy amid shortage concerns

The Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources is turning to alternative energy sources as a means of combating electricity shortages expected to hit the country in a few years, provided sufficient resources to satisfy the booming demand cannot be found.

A new regulation from the ministry was recently announced to collect opinions and critiques for improvement, and the General Directorate of Electrical Power Resources Survey and Development Administration (EİE) will begin considering applications for establishing wind energy plants on fields that have potential for power densities of at least 300 Watts per square meter (W/m2).
Wind energy investments will be inspected one time during the construction phase, and the EİE will give full support to the investors in measuring the average wind power of the field, ground survey and the feasibility of the plant.

“The Regulations on the Assessment of the Wind Energy Potential” outline the provisional methods and basics to fully evaluate Turkey’s wind energy capacity. According to these new regulations, the EİE will determine every region with at least 300 W/m2 wind power density and tag these places as “wind resource fields suitable for establishing power plants.” The ministry will then initiate contacts with relevant state institutions so that the ground building schemes are prepared in way not to collide with possible wind energy power plants. The EİE will publish on its Web site all the basic information for these sites, such as the name of the field plot, Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) geographic coordinates, topographic features, wind characteristics, power densities, reference established power and possible quantities of energy that can be produced. This information will also include the property, usage and transportation conditions of the sites, as well as their relations with the surrounding areas.

Zaman