First wind turbines in Uzbekistan begin operating

Uzbekistan is preparing to launch the first wind power generation facilities, the press secretary of the Ministry of Energy Khasan Toshkhodjayev reported.

On December 18, an official published a video from a power plant under construction in the Navoi region. It shows six spinning turbines and power lines in the distance.

“The turbines of the first wind power plant in the Tomdy district are generating in a test mode,” Toshkhodjayev described the video.

The 500 MW power plant is being built by order of the UAE energy company Masdar, which won the tender in October 2020. Two years later, it entered into a contract with China’s Goldwind to supply 111 4.5 MW turbines.

In June, the Ministry of Energy announced the installation of the first turbine at the construction site. The first phase of the wind farm is planned to be launched before the end of this year.

Once fully operational in 2024, the power plant will supply 1.9 GWh to the grid annually. This volume will cover the needs of more than 500 thousand households, while saving 175 million cubic meters of gas and reducing atmospheric emissions by 1.1 million tons.

Masdar launched the first commercial solar power plant in Uzbekistan in August 2021. The company is also working on a number of other projects in the field of green energy.

A small solar power plant with a capacity of 40 kW in the Tashkent region, three solar power plants with a total capacity of 897 MW in Jizzakh, Samarkand and Surkhandarya regions are among them. A year ago, an Emirati company was chosen to build a 250 MW solar power plant in the Bukhara region.

In addition, in May, Masdar won a bid for the construction of a solar power plant near Guzar, Kashkadarya. At the EBRD forum in Samarkand, the company formalized agreements to create new power plant projects for $2.6 billion.