Tag: Solar Farm

  • Turkey’s first local solar tower built in southern city

    Turkey’s first local solar tower built in southern city

    Turkish energy company Greenway has completed the construction of Turkey’s first “concentrated solar power tower plant” (CSP) in the southern province of Mersin, which is located on one of the world’s major Sun Belt areas.

    The first local concentrated solar power tower plant built in Turkish southern province of Mersin has a 5 MW of thermal power capacity. Company photo
    The first local concentrated solar power tower plant built in Turkish southern province of Mersin has a 5 MW of thermal power capacity. Company photo

    The plant, which has been built with an investment of $50 million by Greenway with the support of Turkey’s science watchdog TÜBİTAK and the Technology Development Foundation of Turkey (TTGV), generates 5 MW of thermal power, equivalent to the energy requirement of 1,500 houses.

    “Turkey is located on a major sun belt and is lucky compared to many countries that develop technology in this field,” Co-founder of Greenway and Project Management Director Serdar Erturan said in a statement.

    Erturan noted that major world powers had been placing a special focus on solar power plants as a substantial power generation source in response to the increasing energy demand due to rising technological needs.The plant is used as one of the most efficient methods to convert solar power to electricity across the world. While it’s one of its kind in Turkey, it also marks many firsts in the world.

    There are similar tower type plants in Spain, Israel and the U.S., and the Greenway Mersin CSP stands out for its wireless communication system as well as its lego type design, which enables easy transfer, installation and easy access to the site.

    Competetive price gain

    The plant utilizes only water and solar light, and by focusing solar energy over the tower, it enables reaching high temperatures. Reflective panels consist of unique glass mirrors and system components and energy production processes contain only environment friendly materials. The only output of the system is the high pressure steam.

    “Thanks to hybrid and compact systems that lower costs to competitive levels and are not dependent on external sources in technological terms, it is possible to generate energy from renewable energy sources, at high outputs and competitive prices,” Erturan said.

  • A Solar City Tries to Rise in Turkey Despite Lack of Federal Support

    A Solar City Tries to Rise in Turkey Despite Lack of Federal Support

    By Julia Harte at SolveClimate

    Tue May 10, 2011 5:00am EDT

    Installing PV arrays across one half of one percent of Turkey’s landmass could supply the nation’s current electrical capacity

    By Julia Harte, SolveClimate News

    brightsource solar mojave2

    ANTALYA, Turkey—Turkey’s weak policy support for solar power hasn’t stopped the sun-soaked southern city of Antalya from forging ahead with plans to exploit its solar resource — and to encourage other local governments to follow suit.

    In April, Antalya opened its long-awaited “Solar House,” the first step in its push to become Turkey’s first and only solar city.

    The environmental education center and renewable energy showcase boasts 24 one-kilowatt photovoltaic (PV) panels, among other clean energy solutions such as a windmill and a track that generates power from bicycles.

    The model house cost about $600,000 and was 90 percent funded by Turkish companies and 10 percent by the United Nations Development Program. It will produce and store all the energy it consumes and feed excess power back into the grid — though it won’t profit from doing so.

    The country’s energy authority doesn’t yet buy surplus electricity from small producers of solar power. This is partly why the cost of installing solar panels remains prohibitive for nearly all Antalya residents, local observers say.

    “We need to show the Turkish people how we can produce solar energy, because it’s a very new concept for most Turks,” Mustafa Akaydın, the mayor of Antalya, told SolveClimate News in an interview.

    According to Akaydın, the Solar House is “preparation” for its wider Solar City Green Antalya plan. Over the next decade and a half, the municipality hopes to transform itself into a clean energy dynamo on par with solar cities like Malmö, Sweden and  Barcelona, Spain.

    Though the financial support structure for the program is still fuzzy, the goal, at least, is clear: “We want to be the pioneers here and show the rest of the country about this solar potential,” said Akaydın.

    Massive Untapped Potential

    More than one million terawatt-hours of solar radiation hit Turkey each year. Solar leaders Spain and California, by comparison, receive approximately 0.8 million terrawatt-hours annually.

    Theoretically, installing PV arrays across some 770 square miles — one half of one percent of Turkey’s landmass — could supply the nation’s current electrical capacity.

    At present, PV systems account for just 5 megawatts of installed capacity. Turkey’s 8-gigawatt solar thermal capacity is seen as slightly more promising, but still accounts for less than 1 percent of the country’s overall energy production.

    Antalya’s municipal government doesn’t yet have a goal for how much extra solar power capacity it hopes to add. For now, there is no accepted international definition of what it takes to earn the moniker of “solar city,” though several dozen such cities are said to exist throughout the world, including 25 in the United States.

    The European Solar Cities Initiative, a project of the International Solar Energy Society, defines solar communities by their “large-scale integration of sustainable energy sources into city planning and urban concepts.”

    In that spirit, Antalya is developing other renewable energies besides solar. A new waste management plant, for instance, will collect 60 percent of the city’s sewage and turn it into purified mud, which can then be converted into biogas.

    The biogas-to-energy conversion facility is still under construction — a new component was finished the same week the Solar House opened — but in two months it will have a capacity of 2 megawatts, according to Münevver Ateş, environmental director at the plant. Once the facility is able to collect all the sewage in the city, its capacity will double.

    More important than its capacity, however, is the fact that Antalya’s plant will produce all the energy it consumes, said Ateş, making it the only sustainable waste management plant in Turkey. “Many Turkish visitors come to study our example.”

    Starting with the Rooftops

    Antalya’s effort to boost its solar capacity will begin with a campaign to encourage individuals to install solar panels on their houses, though it won’t be easy.

    The city currently has between 1 and 2 megawatts of solar power atop local residences, according to Ateş Uğurel, chairman of the Turkish Photovoltaic Industry Association, and founder of Temiz Dunya, the eco-architectural firm that designed Antalya’s Solar House. They may not be able to add much more because many Antalya residences are tall apartment buildings with small rooftops already full of thermal heaters, he said.

    “There simply isn’t enough space.”

    And then there’s the cost. The average Turkish house requires 3 kilowatts of electrical capacity. That amount of solar power costs approximately $10,000 to install, Uğurel said.

    Widespread adoption should have an impact on costs. In about one month, Mayor Akaydın said he expects the passage of a municipal bylaw that would require future apartment buildings to be lit with PV panels.

    After the residential campaign, the municipality will install solar power in city parks and gardens; increase its use in Antalya’s abundant greenhouses; and encourage local hotel owners to install solar power.

    To date, the municipal government has installed 60 kilowatts of solar power — 24 kilowatts in the Solar House and the remainder in traffic lights.

    Solar-Powered Tourism

    “Antalya has the biggest solar potential in its tourism sector,” which attracts 50 million visitors a year, said Uğurel.

    According to him, rooftops on the city’s hotels are big enough that installing PV panels would be a wise upfront investment for owners, providing free electricity once the systems pay for themselves.

    Improving the solar capacity of Antalya’s hotels, Akaydın explained, might also draw more eco-tourists.

    “There’s a trend in the world where tourists prefer an ecologically aware city as a destination,” he said. “Because of this, some hotel owners are now starting to use solar energy in new constructions.”

    During the final stages of Antalya’s transformation into a solar city, the municipality intends to construct a solar farm and nurture a homegrown PV production industry.

    Plans are already underway for a 100-kilowatt solar “forest” near Antalya, with “trees” composed of PV arrays designed by Mehmet Bengü Uluengin, an ecological architect and professor at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, who also designed the Solar House.

    According to Uluengin, any city aiming to clean up its energy portfolio should start by reducing the amount of energy it consumes.

    “That is where the low-hanging fruit are,” he said. “It is much cheaper, and more logical, to eliminate a kilowatt of energy use than to cater to its production via solar.”

    Uluengin also pointed out that for solar to become widely used in Turkey the country’s entire energy transmission network would need to be upgraded to a smart grid that could accommodate not only millions of consumers, but also millions of producers.

    “Antalya could become a solar city without necessarily using solar energy at high levels,” said Uğurel. “It could educate many people about solar, and use solar architecture to reduce the need for heating and cooling.”

    No Political Allies

    With the exception of Antalya’s municipal government, solar power has few political allies in Turkey.

    The central government passed an amendment to Turkey’s renewable energy law at the end of 2010, introducing a new feed-in tariff for solar power of $0.133 per kilowatt-hour. That’s just under 10 euro cents per kilowatt, far less than the 45.7 and 33 euro cents that Germany and Spain, respectively, offer their solar producers.

    In addition, the new amendment restricts the amount of solar power that can be added to the grid over the next two years. Only 600 megawatts of solar power can be connected by December 31, 2013, according to the rule.

    “If there is anything positive about the amendment, it has helped to clear out the ‘speculative froth’ in solar,” said Uluengin.

    “The [Turkish] Solar Expo in 2010 was packed with investors … This year, the place was virtually deserted. The only people remaining were those truly committed to solar — those with longer-term views and more realistic expectations of returns-on-investment.”

    When applications for new solar power projects in Turkey are submitted later this year, it will present a clearer picture of just how much interest there is in developing the country’s solar resource. In the meantime, the government’s meager solar subsidies are discouraging foreign companies from investing in Antalya, Akaydın argued.

    “There are a lot of people from all over the world, especially in Germany and China, who want to invest in Antalya’s solar projects,” he said. “The investors are ready, but the legislation is lacking. This isn’t just a task for our municipality; this is a national responsibility.”

    The central government’s apathy toward solar power is reflected in Turks’ general lack of knowledge regarding solar.

    “People still do not know of photovoltaic technology,” said Solar House designer Uluengin. “At trade fairs, we have people coming up to us pointing at PV panels and asking, ‘Where is the water storage tank for this thing?’ In Turkey, people know solar thermal. They don’t know PV.”

    ‘Very Healthy’

    Still, Uluengin considers Turkey’s solar industry “very healthy” because it is being driven by small-scale and grassroots development.

    “Only if an industry is viable on market forces alone will it be able to survive long term,” he said. In coming years, Uluengin believes that most PV systems in Turkey will be installed on the rooftops of commercial users, not in utility-scale applications.

    Uğurel is also highly optimistic that the solar industry in Turkey can flourish without increased government incentives.

    In a couple of years he expects solar power to reach grid parity, the point at which its price will rival that of conventional grid power. That’s largely because of the rising costs of fossil fuel electricity. Between the first half of 2008 and the first half of 2010, electricity prices climbed roughly 30 percent for Turkish households and industry, according to European Commission figures.

    At the same time, the cost of PV systems is decreasing as more small Turkish entrepreneurs try their hand at producing panels, Uğurel said. “Every day, a new company enters the solar power sector.”

    See Also:  With No Policy Incentives, Turkey’s Solar Entrepreneurs Wait Out in the Cold Italy’s Green Giant Enel to Tap Turkey’s Geothermal Reserves Building of Turkey’s First Nuclear Plant, Sited on a Fault Line, Facing Fresh Questions

  • Firm mulls building Europe’s largest solar plant in Turkey

    Firm mulls building Europe’s largest solar plant in Turkey

    By SHARON UDASIN
    04/26/2011 02:38

    US-Dutch solar energy firm GiraSolar in talks with Turkish partners over plant expected to provide 100 megawatts of energy.

    Photo by: Bloomberg
    Photo by: Bloomberg

    An American-Dutch solar energy firm, GiraSolar, is in talks with anonymous Turkish partners to build Europe’s biggest – and Turkey’s first – solar energy plant and mass produce solar panels there, the company announced recently.

    The venture has subsequently elicited conflicting opinions from Israeli solar experts.

    The proposed plant intends to provide an estimated 100 megawatts of energy through a group of “sub-plants” on a 2,000-square meter plot of land, at a location that GiraSolar would not disclose.

    Although the company has installed solar panel systems on various individual buildings in Turkey since 2004, this will be its first venture there of such a huge capacity, according to Wieland Koornstra, CEO of GiraSolar.

    Thus far, the largest working European solar plant is a 71- megawatt facility in Rovigo, Italy, according to Bloomberg. For GiraSolar, Koornstra explained, Turkey was the perfect spot to erect a huge plant, not merely because of its consistently strong sunshine.

    “Everywhere in Europe there are restrictions on the size – like in Italy, anything over one megawatt will be very difficult in the future – and that’s really happening everywhere,” Koornstra told The Jerusalem Post. He noted, however, that there are fewer restrictions in Germany – but far less sun than in Mediterranean coastal nations.

    “Countries for larger projects will be in Eastern Europe, Turkey and Greece,” he continued. “Turkey is a country that is virgin land – this hasn’t been done yet there. It will be the largest scale power project for the grid. Turkey is a country where if you have the right spot for your plant, it will be feasible without any incentive.”

    Meanwhile, Koornstra also sees Turkey as his company’s way of branching out into the Middle East, adding that “Israel is interesting” to him, as well as Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

    Though perhaps not a game-changer in terms of large-scale nationwide energy needs, such a project will certainly benefit Turkey – a country that between 1999 and 2008 was increasing the rate of electricity requirements by a rate of 9.5 billion kilowatt hours per year.

    According to Dr. David Faiman, chairman of the department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics at Ben-Gurion University’s Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research in Sede Boqer, director of Israel’s National Solar Energy Center and chief scientist at ZenithSolar, Turkey will probably generate around 220 billion kilowatt hours in 2011.

    “On this scale, a single 100 MW PV project – even though it would be the largest in Europe – would offset only two percent of the annual rise in Turkey’s electricity production,” Faiman said. “That is to say, Turkey would need to install about 50 such photovoltaic plants each year in order to enable her to cease the ever-increasing construction of conventional power plants.

    By establishing a local photovoltaic industry, Faiman explained that the government would then be able to undertake further projects, and add more photovoltaic plants each year.

    “We are in the preparation stages – it’s our absolute aim to realize this project,” Koornstra said. “It’s also an absolute must that the manufacturing takes place in Turkey, because the feed-in tariff is linked to manufacturing.”

    Like Israel, Turkey has a government issued feed-in tariff – money that the country’s electric corporation gives back to those who contribute solar energy to the grid. But Koornstra said that the payback system isn’t quite as attractive as it could be.

    He explained that investors will make a profit on their investments only after about eight to nine years. Yet by using solar panels and other equipment produced in Turkey – rather than importing supplies – the company will get a bit extra out of its investment, he added.

    “When you produce the panels in Turkey, you get an extra bonus on your feed-in tariff,” Koornstra said. “Basically they have the smartest law in Europe when it comes to feedin tariffs.”

    However, a second Israeli solar expert, Rafi Kirshenboim, of Chinese-owned ET-Solar, said he does not see the merits of initiating such a project in Turkey.

    “I believe that in order to build such a big photovoltaic plant, the natural partner will be a big [company] with experience and financial capabilities, and not GiraSolar,” said Kirshenboim, manager of his company’s Israel branch. He said he favors installing solar panels in smaller quantities, rather than in one large field.

    “The real issues with big fields are that they use a lot of land space, they need a long, new transportation line of electricity that generates another strong electromagnetic wave and electricity losses,” Kirshenboim said. “The ‘good’ things about the big plants are that they are cheaper to build – so that the cost of electricity produced is cheaper – but if we go for this argument, the cheapest thing to do is build an atomic plant, like in Japan.

    “You should not replace one mistake with another mistake – we need to go for a green-energy solution that does not ruin nature, and we need to look at what will be the benefits to the next generation – not just the damage to our wallet.”

    Yet Koornstra believes in Turkey’s ability not only to erect such a large plant, but also to produce a sufficient amount of the panels to both export to Europe and compete with an overwhelmingly Chinese dominated market.

    “Manufacturing of solar panels is largely automated,” Koornstra said. “The advantage that China has is that manual work is very cheap there. Electricity is also relatively cheap, and land is too, but it’s the same thing in Turkey. But there is one major advantage of Turkey – it is one week away in terms of transports [to Europe], and China is six weeks away.”

    Faiman expressed hope that Koorsntra’s strategy of producing and exporting panels would work out.

    “This would be a refreshing economic development on the world stage, because it is not healthy for one country to have a world monopoly,” Faiman said. “True competition may have the effect of reducing prices sufficiently to enable PV to compete with the more polluting ways of generating electric power.”

    Still, Koornstra acknowledged some disadvantages to Turkish produced panels. “The bigger problem that Turkey has is that there are virtually no technical products that say ‘Made in Turkey.’ A solar panel that says ‘Made in Turkey’ will have a hard time getting a foothold in Europe,” he added.

    Kirshenboim disagreed with producing panels in Turkey, explaining that such a factory can only work there if the government gave special incentives for the local manufacturers – and would stand very little chance of survival in the European market.

    “In a country without many photovoltaic installations, without local raw materials industry and resources – I find it hard to believe that a local manufacturer that works alone will be able to be successful,” Kirshenboim said, citing cost and investment risk as deterrents.

    While Koornstra could not predict the exact cost of the total 100-megawatt project, he said that a 3-megawatt project currently costs about 250 million euros. One megawatt alone can provide enough energy to power about 300 households, he said, and Faiman agreed with this estimate.

    GiraSolar is in negotiations with two different Turkish parties already heavily involved in the country’s energy sector, and is in the process of developing a financing plan, according to Koornstra – who predicts that the first spade will hit the ground in about two years. From there, each of the small “sub-plants” within the larger block will go up consecutively, so that the plant as a whole can produce more and more energy gradually.

    “We are talking with partners that want to realize this, that are well-equipped to get the licenses done. The land is available, the technology is available, the financial negotiations are ongoing,” Koornstra said. “We are at full speed to realize this, and if there are no negative changes taking place in the Turkish renewable energy program, then it’s a go.”

    Despite Faiman’s enthusiasm over the potential plant in Turkey, he did not advocate a similar project in Israel – particularly with respect to internally produced solar panels. Instead, Faiman said he supports Concentrator Photovoltaics – a method used by his company ZenithSolar – as a more efficient, and potentially exportable system, than regular photovoltaic panels.

    “Today it is purely a question of the availability of cheap labor,” he said of the panels, stressing that neither the US or Israel could succeed in this arena – but perhaps India could stand a chance. “We certainly could not compete with Chinese prices by manufacturing photovoltaic panels at home.”

    The Jerusalem Post

  • Europe’s Biggest Solar Farm To Be Built In Turkey

    Europe’s Biggest Solar Farm To Be Built In Turkey

    Julia | April 2nd, 2011

    blue mosque turkey sunThe 100-MW photovoltaic power station would be the first to harness Turkey’s remarkable solar resource.

    solar farmTurkey has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to solar power. At more than 1 million terawatt-hours (twH) of solar radiation each year, it receives more sunlight than most countries in Europe — for comparison, Spain and California each receive about 800,000 twH annually. But solar power contributes a mere five megawatts to Turkey’s overall installed capacity of 46,500 MW. Without subsidies from the government for their power, solar companies have been discouraged from entering the sunny country, and the solar power market in Turkey, despite all its promise, has remained small and scattered.

    A U.S.-Dutch company is planning to change all that.

    GiraSolar is in talks with local Turkish energy companies to build a 100-MW photovoltaic power station in southern Turkey. According to GiraSolar executives, the project will require 2,000 square meters of land, and could be completed within two years — about half the time it takes to construct a nuclear power plant, which Turkey is currently preparing to do.

    If the 100-MW solar plant is built, “this would make Turkey known as the solar source of the world,” GiraSolar CEO Wieland M. Koornstra told the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

    It’s no surprise to regular Green Prophet readers that the Middle East has bountiful solar power potential. But it is surprising, given the dismal state of Turkish energy policy, to see a solar energy project this ambitious launching in Turkey. For decades, the country’s energy authority didn’t offer any financial incentive to solar producers to help them get started in the electricity market. And the Electricity Market Law makes it difficult for auto-producers — entities producing power primarily for their own use — to generate electricity at a large or medium scale.

    In spite of that discouraging regulatory environment, some small solar companies have still managed to get off the ground in Turkey, usually with the aid of foreign lenders and equipment manufacturers. This grassroots solar industry comprises approximately fifty photovoltaics companies and several hundred thermal companies.

    In December 2010, a long-awaited amendment to Turkey’s law on renewable energy passed, introducing a price guarantee of $0.133 per kilowatt-hour of solar energy. Though still far below the price incentives in countries like Germany or Spain, which offer solar producers feed-in tariffs of about $0.69 and $0.50 respectively, and have active solar power markets as a result, the new price guarantee in Turkey is a step in the right direction. And if it brings in more deals like the one GiraSolar has proposed, it will be have been worth the wait.

    via Europe’s Biggest Solar Farm To Be Built In Turkey | Green Prophet.