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RF airs plans for $2.5bn Volgograd wind generation park |
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Oleg Kouzbit, Online News Managing Editor
Russia’s RusHydro and Rostekhnologii are putting together a huge, $2.5bn wind generation park in the Volgograd region. With a potential output of as much as 1.2+GW of wind capacity Russia looks determined to catch up and eventually join the club of the world’s leading wind power producers.
Russia’s largest energy-generating company, RusHydro, and the RF’s government-run technology corporation, Rostekhnologii, are planning a colossal, $2.5bn wind generator park in the Volgograd region.
According to RusHydro’s renewable energy department, the project will have a power capacity of 1GW and will most probably be located in a forestless area of the Lower Volga basin known for its windy weather. The wind park will reportedly take a year to design and another four years for construction.
When asked about the project timeframes, RusHydro’s Pavel Ponkratyev was quoted by Vedomosti as saying that this would be announced following the signing of the RF government’s renewable energy decrees expected later this spring.
Downwind from the Far East to the Volga
RusHydro is an umbrella for 60 renewable energy facilities across Russia with an overall installed capacity of 25.4GW (including the RF’s largest, 6.4GW Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower station in Siberia currently being repaired after last year’s emergency).
It is not RusHydro’s first high-capacity wind-focused effort. Last year it made international headlines by choosing Russia’s Far East to pilot its ambitious $97m, 36MW project. Sharing its long-term vision the firm would say then there was room for another 200MW worth of wind power complexes in the area.
None is operational yet, but the company says it believes there’s a future for wind energy technology in this country.
Second largest after London
If and when realized, the Volograd complex is going to be the world’s second largest wind energy project nearly matching the London Array wind park being built on the Thames, and reportedly accounting for about one-twentieth of EU output at the present time.
However, until the Volgograd project actually comes online, Russia will be still trailing far behind global wind energy leaders. The world’s Top-3 are Germany, Spain and the U.S. with an aggregate 37.5GW in installed wind power capacity. India, Denmark and the Netherlands have also joined the eco-friendly race with an amassed 8.8GW.
There already are entire cities 100% powered by wind energy. The trailblazer is in the small town of Rock Port, Missouri in the U.S. And more are following.
Denmark, Germany and India are currently considered the indisputable global leaders in terms of the percentage that wind power generates in their overall energy markets. These reportedly account for 20+%, 14+% and 3+%, respectively. The world’s average is still tiny, though, at just over 1%.
Between Oregon’s farm and Norway’s ‘archipelagos’
With London Array and the RusHydro-Rostekhnologii project as the expected frontrunners, there is a host of other projects, large and small, moving ahead rapidly. Here are a few of the most noteworthy:
To augment the already operational 781.5MW wind station in Rosco, Texas, the largest of its kind today, GE has recently announced $2bn worth of plans for another 845MW ‘wind generator farm’ in Oregon, with an eye to sell electricity to its energy-starved neighbor California. The capacity will reportedly be enough to power as many as 235,000 households there, beginning 2012.
The EU is putting together a huge ‘super network’ project to be built in the North Sea. Construction of powerful generators is supposed to start next year; costs have yet to be calculated.
Norway, which has one of Europe’s windiest coastlines, is eyeing a smaller ‘network’ of its own, Newlaunches.com reports. A local company, On Office, reportedly suggests that gigantic wind generators be clustered along the sea shore to create an ‘archipelago’ array. The 392MW project has been designed to power at least 120,000 Norwegian households. What seems to give the project a special flavor is plan to make the ‘archipelagos’ part of a tourist and recreation complex with hotels and malls.
Long before its archipelago complex gets built, Norway expects to start next year the world’s largest single wind generator—162m above the country’s coastline. Its rotor diameter will be a reported 144.8m. The $67.5m generator will have a projected capacity of 10MW, enough to supply electricity to 2,000 households, Newlaunches.com reported.
Russia, the sleeping bear awakes
Analysts feel that Russia has an estimated potential of generating as much as 30% of its energy from wind (a reported 260 billion kilowatt-hours/year). So it has a long way to go from its current less than 1% and a current installed capacity of just 15-20MW.
With 1GW of ‘clean energy’, the prospective Volgograd project is sending a wake up call that the RF is serious about harnessing its potential. How much it is willing to pay to make it a reality is another question.
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