With a rotor diameter of 100 meters and hub heights of 80 meters, GE’s 1.6-100 MW turbines have the highest power production capacity of any turbines in their category.
A 50 MW wind farm in a town near Istanbul will be the first site in Europe to use GE’s revolutionary 1.6-100 MW wind turbines, GE announced at the European Wind Energy Association’s annual meeting last week. A project of Fina Enerji, a Turkish renewable energy firm, the Tayakadin wind farm will use 31 of GE’s super-efficient turbines. It will come online by 2013.
Tayakadin will be the third wind farm to use the 1.6-100 MW turbines, but the first farm to use them in Europe. The project is expected to be complete by the first quarter of 2013. The turbines themselves will be shipped from a GE facility in Germany at the end of this year.
Fina has completed two wind energy projects to date: wind farms in the Turkish provinces of Hatay and Izmir, which have a collective capacity of 87.5 MW and use GE’s 2.5-100 turbines. The firm has new wind projects with a total capacity of more than 200 MW in its pipeline.
In the next two years, GE expects to install more than 1,200 of its new 1.6-100 model turbines in the United States. Energy companies hoping to purchase the turbines should monitor progress at Tayakadin to see how they perform in their first year.
Pushing towards Turkey’s ambitious wind energy goals
The Tayakadin wind farm brings Turkey a very small step closer to the wind energy capacity it hopes to achieve by 2023: 20,000 MW.
With a current installed wind energy capacity of approximately 1,800 MW, this goal may seem quixotic on its face. But Turkey has remarkable wind resources — an estimated potential capacity of 48,000 MW — and the government’s enthusiasm for the technology is refreshing to see, although the way it executes new wind energy projects is sometimes irresponsible.
In a sign that the Turkish wind energy sector is becoming increasingly attractive from a business standpoint, some firms, such as the Tektuğ Elektrik Group, have undertaken their first wind energy projects this year.
With mounting investor interest and the early arrival of new technologies such as GE’s 1.6-100 turbines, Turkey is equipped to become a leader in wind energy in the next few years.
:: MarketWatch
Read more about wind energy in Turkey:
Wind Energy and Organic Farming Collide in Western Turkey
Tektuğ Elektrik Group Enters Turkey’s Expanding Wind Energy Sector
Local Wind Energy Industry Emerges In Turkey
Image via GE
Author: Julia Harte
Julia spent her childhood summers in a remote research station in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, helping her father with a 25-year-old experiment in which he simulated global warming over a patch of alpine meadow. When not measuring plant species diversity or carbon flux in the soil, she could be found scampering around the forests and finding snowbanks to slide down. Now she is a freelance journalist living in Istanbul, where her passion for the environment intersects with her interest in Turkish politics and grassroots culture. She also writes about Turkish climate and energy policy for Solve Climate News.
