The installation of the first Turkish-made solar panels is underway in central Turkey’s Karapınar Solar Power Plant, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez said in a statement on Thursday.
“We have begun the installation of the panels in Konya’s Karapınar Solar Power Plant, which is set to be one of the biggest solar plants in the world,” he said.
The SSP has been Turkey’s biggest solar plant project.
Kalyon Holding, together with a South Korean Hanwha Q-Cells consortium, won the tender for the project – the Karapınar Renewable Energy Resources Zone Project – in March 2017 at a cost of $0.0699 per kilowatt-hour.
However, Hanwha will not continue with the project, and China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC) has stepped in to construct the facility and to provide an additional two years of technical assistance after the turnkey contract expires.
The minister also emphasized the government’s efforts to ramp up renewable energy production.
“Our only effort is to realize a renewable energy consumption in the industry,” he said, adding that the electricity consumption has begun to recover in June from the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“The investors who put their faith in Turkey have made the biggest contributions during this process,” Dönmez added.
The minister also said that Turkey is one of the few countries which have not paused its investments during the pandemic and added that the government expects a speedier recovery starting in the last quarter of 2020.
Dönmez also emphasized that global production and logistic networks should be diversified, especially during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Turkey is providing investors big opportunities. We are located in the spot that is the closest to the three continents. We are only a four-hour flight away from a $25 billion worth of markets. We have an infrastructure that is capable of competing in the fields of transportation, energy and logistics,” he said, adding that Turkey also has qualified human resources.
Dönmez also stated that leading companies from all over the world are continuing their businesses in Turkey in the fields of natural gas distribution, oil production and renewable energy.
“We have taken significant steps to nationalize energy technologies that we have employed in the energy and mining sectors. We have realized a system that supports local production, setting up factories and research and development. If we have the sources, we should have the technology too,” he concluded.
