TASHKENT

Saudi Arabia-based energy company ACWA Power has won an international tender to construct a 100-megawatt wind power plant in northwestern Uzbekistan, offering the lowest tariff of 2.5695 cents per kilowatt-hour of generated electricity.

At the final stage of the bid, ACWA Power competed with Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company PJSC (Masdar) and France’s Voltalia, Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Investment and Foreign Trade said, adding that Masdar was announced as the reserve winner with a tariff of 2.6550 cents per kilowatt-hour.

The wind farm will be located on the territory of the Karauzyak and Beruni regions of the Karakalpakstan autonomous republic. The volume of foreign direct investment for the implementation of the project is estimated at $140 million.

In accordance with the investment commitments, the wind farm is expected to be commissioned by mid-2023 and would ensure the production of 400 million kilowatt-hours of clean electricity per year, the ministry said.

The project is part of the government’s wider programme aimed at diversifying the country’s energy balance by introducing alternative sources of electricity.

Once completed, the wind farm will provide electricity to about 110,000 households, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 157,000 tonnes per year, as well as creating more than 1,000 new jobs during the construction period, it said.

In 2020, Uzbekistan’s Energy Ministry and ACWA Power signed a 25-year power purchase agreement with a total value of $1.2 billion. Electricity will be generated by a 1,500-megawatt gas turbine power plant, which the company will build in the city of Shirin, Syrdarya region.

ACWA Power has two more similar projects agreed with the government of Uzbekistan, one of them to construct a wind farm with a capacity of 500-1,000 megawatts in the Navoi region.

Earlier this year, Uzbekistan increased its renewable energy target to a total of 12 gigawatts by 2030. The country now hopes to increase its photovoltaic solar plant capacity to 7 gigawatts and wind power generation to 5 gigawatts. The populous Central Asian country has set a goal of increasing to 25 percent the share of electricity generated from renewable sources in the total energy balance.