Pakistan - Groundbreaking 50 MW of wind power plant in Jhimpir

Pakistan’s first 50 MW wind farm set up in Sindh. About 60 percent of the wind farm has been completed with Nordex wind turbines. Project development time for wind power and solar energy is significantly lesser than coal or large hydro power projects.

Pakistan can significantly reduce its oil import bill by shifting to renewable energy and meet its rising industrial and domestic energy demands without burning fossil fuels in thermal power plants, the most expensive form of fuel.

This was stated by Chief Executive and Managing Director of Fauji Fertilizer Company, Lt General (Rtd) Malik Arif Hayat while addressing the ground breaking ceremony of country’s first 50 MW wind power project by FFC Energy Limited, a subsidiary of Fauji Fertilizer Company at Jhampir, District Thatta on Friday. He said with the ground breaking of country’s first 50MW wind power project, is a significant milestone in country’s history. Pakistan has taken first step in wind energy to bridge the current energy shortfall which is adversely affecting the national economy.

About 60 percent of the wind farm has been completed and it will start trial generation of power in June 2012, which would be provided free of cost untill the start of commercial operations in November 2012.

He said that Pakistan is currently generating 70 percent of its power need by burning fossil fuel despite the fact that soaring oil prices in the last few years have made it difficult to economically generate power with current energy mix and consequently sustain economic growth of our country. He emphasized that Pakistan needs to devise a multi-pronged strategy to deal with energy challenges. We need to enhance our power generation capacity, reduce cost of electricity and decrease dependence on fossil fuels, all at the same time, he added.

Renewable energy resources like wind power, solar energy, hydel and biomass are indigenous, abundant and green by their very nature. Moreover, project development time for wind power and solar power projects is significantly lesser than coal or large hydro power projects, he added.

75 countries around the globe are actively implementing this technology for commercial power generation and 22 of these have already crossed the 1000 MW of installed capacity. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory USA, Pakistan has a potential of 346 GW of electricity that can be generated only from wind - and only if 10% of that i.e. 34GW is achieved in the next 15-20 years, Pakistan will be on its way towards achieving energy security.

FFC’s investment in the ongoing project of 50MW is $135m. However, the company is committed to installing further wind farms with a total capacity of 250MW.

In the current wind farm, the company is installing 33 wind turbines of 1.5 MW each out of which 8 turbines have already been installed and the remaining will be installed within next three months. The equipment is being procured from Nordex of Germany, a renowned company in the field of wind energy which has over 4800 wind turbines with total output of 7500 MW installed in 34 countries of the world.